I hate going to the cinema by myself, in fact I hate it so much I’ve never done it. Well there was this one time when I wanted to see Return of the King for the uhh…conveniently forget number…time, but I didn’t have a choice because everyone else had seen it and no one wanted to accompany me because I have a tendency to get involved in the movie a ‘bit’ much, along the lines of cheering on the Elves and entreating them to “cut off that Orcs’s head” and ‘watch out behind them!” But watching a movie alone has always seemed to me the preserve of old pervs checking out some mediocre soft porn movie and wanking off furtively in the back row since they are probably unaware of how to use a computer or have access to a decent internet connection.

Despite my reservations I went to see The Namesake today alone. The sibling refused to accompany me begging off on the grounds of college and all the mates (well all two of them) were at work, it being a working day. The Schizo Shitzu looked at me with a look of benign puzzlement when I checked with him and then went back to sniffing his arse. So off I hopped by my lonesome to the only cinema within a 100 miles that was showing the film. And what a cinema it was, one film showing, one person playing the multi-faceted role of box office person, ticket checker, door opener, etc. and a rather bizarre spectacle of a chap in a posh suit behind the candy counter. Odd I say, very odd…but I got myself some Reeses Pieces and settled down to watch.

Now I like Mira Nair, simply based on the fact that Monsoon Wedding is one of my favourite movies. I must say she didn’t disappoint. Initially I was a bit meh, the acting seemed a tad wooden and the plotline rushed. But towards the middle, boy oh boy did it get good. I reckon it stood up pretty well to the book, which I read last year and there was so much I recognized in the movie. Max’s self-centeredness when confronted with grief in a context she couldn’t understand, the father’s inability to express himself, Gogol’s initial rejection of his cultural background, the fact that just because the girl is Bengali (insert Sinhala/Buddhist or whatever cultural background you may be, even marginally) DOES not mean it will work out and the coming to terms that Gogol and Ashima come to.

Tabu, despite having a silly name I for some reason associate with something out of the seamier depths of the Kama Sutra, was awesome as was Kal Penn and Irfan Kahn. The latter was very good in an understated way, actually so understated that initially it came across as a bit wooden. The chemistry between Irfan and Tabu was actually pretty good in a reserved, South Asian manner (big up to arranged marriages, if I can score a girl like that!). And Tabu has the most expressive eyes I’ve seen since Nandita Das, some of those looks…whoo…what a guy would not do for a girl to look at them like that (think wrestling great whites, talking sense into George Bush kind of acts of bravery)! Kal Penn was good as well, he did sort of have his moments of awkwardness and there was only one actress I didn’t like and that was Zuleikha Robinson, to me she was just not convincing for some reason.

The Namesake is going to take its place alongside Monsoon Wedding as one of my more favourite movies, movies that I can instantly relate to and sort of experience in an ‘outside looking in’ manner. I found out later that Jhumpa Lahiri was actually in the movie and was a bit crushed to realize I had missed her. Cos she’s quite the bird.