THE NAMESAKE

Film Poster of The « Namesake » (2006), directed by Mira Nair, based on Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitzer Price-winning novel (2003).

The document is a poster of a film entitled The Namesake. The focal point and the main character is a young man of Indian origin. He is wandering about alone in the busy street of a big city. He must be in his early twenties. He is casually dressed and is carrying a shoulder bag. From the synopsis we can guess that the young man is Gogol Ganguli and that the city is certainly New York. Gogol is surrounded by blurred shapes of cars and buildings. We can see huge graffiti all around him. He looks anxious (seems to be lost) in the dark red city environment, as if he were a foreigner in a hostile country.

At the top (in the upper part) of the poster and in the background we can see a young Indian couple. Although the picture is a little blurred, we notice that the woman is wearing a sari and that her hair is dressed (combed) in the Indian way. She looks sad (unhappy, gloomy, at a loss) and is leaning against the young man’s shoulder (resting her head against…). These two characters must be the Gangulis, Gogol’s parents, at the time of their arrival in the USA, some twenty years ago. Ashima, the young woman, must have felt lost (frightened, scared) in this unknown Western environment. It was too different from her homeland (the world she knew and was used to). She must have felt uprooted and needed to be reassured by Ashoke her