the namesake and time
04.07.07 (3:38 am) [edit]It was such an odd hour to wake up and I had woken up twice before. Yesterday I went to see movies without sleeping at all, so the sleeping disorder that I am suffering for right now is merely a consequence of not getting to dicipline. However, I woke up finally before six and I realized that I had to call off all things that I had planned to do.
I reluctantly got out to grab a cup of coffee before nine and I learned all stores that I would fulfill my daily needs were closed due to the Easter holiday. Geese. I turned around and headed to Dunking Donuts. You know how disappointed I was by then; America ruins by Dunkin as their catch copy goes.
The movies that I saw yesterday were the Namesake by Mira Nair and Time by Kim Gidok. Two of them were fine, but the Namesake made me somehow fall into a kind of homesick state which I had least anticipated. I found this quite novel given I had currently no place to 'go back'.
When I was in the bathroom of the theater during an interval of those two movies, I caught two middle aged women casually chatting over the namesake that had just been played; I did not quite follow it in detail but heard one of those say 'did not do justice' so I wonder where she directed the complaint to. It is highly possible that it is directed to a movie when it is based on a pre-produced material such as a novel, just as this movie was. But other comments, this time affirmative, followed.
"Wasn't it very different? I found it very moving."
"Yeah, it seems the movie was focused on the mother."
I could have cut in, after confessing that I had eavesdropped their conversation, and joined their quiet but certain rating of their own with conviction, just as I usually would do. But I did not this time. I was content to discover what they were talking about and why I was feeling homesick because of watching the movie set in India. I saw these people derooted but somehow remained together because of the presence of the mother figure there. And somewhere in myself was missing my own mother as the root of all, evil or good or both, that I have got.
I suspect the woman had been complaining about the press coverage and its underrating this film, or lacking the info of how differently and wonderfully this movie version would unfold.
I remember the novel the namesake was more about the protagonist's struggle to find his male identity as a minority, especially a descent of the traditional colony, in the racist society such as US and a succession of his failures in finding the right kind of mate for his own good. Of course it looked different in the movie rendition.