The Namesake

I got an opportunity to watch "The Namesake" this saturday. Based on the best-selling novel by Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake is set in New York and Calcutta over a period of several decades. It's one of those adaptations that's so sprawling and episodic and crammed with incident that, at times, you may wish you were reading the novel. I haven't read the novel as yet but would definitely read it in coming days. Nair tries to shoehorn too much of a big novel into a small two-hour movie. But her ardor for the material matches her ambition. This is a generational family saga everyone can relate to, and Nair gives it her special magic.