The Namesake Movie Analysis

The Namesake is another immigration story, which was adapted a book titled the same name. It is about a middle class immigrant Asian Indian family living in New York. Although the movie tells the story of an Indian family’s struggle in the US, essentially their adjustment problems could be true for all the immigrant families regardless of ethnicity. For example, yearning, adaptation process of the new culture while protecting your own culture and generation gap might be universal fact for all immigrant families. On the other hand, the movie introduces minor details of the Indian culture to the audience. From my point of view, The Namesake might be a good movie as a minority story, but not a great example to learn Indian Culture. In fact, no one can discover another culture from a movie, but some movies do a better job to present the details of the specific culture for foreign audience. Indian culture is quite complex, …show more content…
Since, India is a big, populated, and diverse country. When it comes to life style, religion- more than eight religions has been practicing-, language and mythology, India seems to be highly sophisticate, intricate culture (Indian mirror, n.d). On the other hand, the movie tells its story in a realistic way and without being too much orientalist which is a positive note for the movie.
The Namesake starts with the scene of a family meeting for an arranged wedding, which is a common way to get married in Indian Culture. The main characters are Ashima and Ashoke comes from wealthy families, and both are educated young people. Ashima was introduced with Ashoke who is a young man studying in the US, and she accepts the marriage proposal.