THE NAMESAKE

I caught this movie on its last day at the Logan Budget Theater (thanks again, Logan Budget, for pulling through and showing good films when nobody else is!) I sort of, kind of wanted to see this movie, and would have certainly seen it a lot sooner if I had any idea how much it would blow me away. Sorry, but my preconceptions about Indian films are biased. For some reason every Indian-American film has to be about how American-raised Indian children have to deal with their “crazy” parents and fight about whether to date white people or other Indian-Americans. After this movie I feel like nobody should bother trying to touch on these themes again, because this is the definitive treatment (for any family, not just Indian immigrants). The movie is gorgeously filmed from start to finish, the acting is superlative and heartfelt, everything about this film is so perfect that I really wish I could have seen it sooner, just so I could have forced everybody I know to see it in the theater. I spent the last 1/3 of the movie crying, and had to sit through the credits to compose myself. After the credits were done and the lights came up, I left the theater, only to see an 80-something woman sitting by herself in a trance… she was clearly not able to compose herself even after the credits were done, and that made me even sadder. I’m officially editing my Best Of 2006 list and putting this movie in the top 5, if not higher.