This is a film filled with great compassion and tenderness...and like before, Mira Nair manages to create beautiful shots out of run down urban Indian cityscapes. I do find the ending weak and unresolved-but the flaw is inherited from the original novel, so more of this later.
Ifran Khan and Tabu's arranged marriage and subsequent relocation to Massachusetts, the slowly growing intimacy between them in a lonely land, is captured beautifully in an almost black and white shot of the wintry Boston landscape- on a snowed out grey morning, Ifran climbs the snow covered stairs and waves goodbye to Ashima standing inside the apartment, whose raised hand is silhouetted against the snow outside . The part of the film evokes memories of Rays 'Apu's World' in its approach to showing intimacy.
Irfan and Tabu's quiet and subdued acting is extraordinary and natural, the births and deaths in the family, the growing up of their teenage children, move the story along. The second half is about their son Gogol, who changes his name in a small act of rebellion against his traditional parents. Gogol's white girlfriend plays a small stereotypical cameo and exits. Unlike their immigrant parents, the US born children have never had to undergo any real suffering- perhaps this is why the relationships in the second half lack intensity compared to the first. The story ends predictably with Tabus eventual return to Calcutta, but does not really resolve Gogol's future. The film makes the best out of a book whose theme of the immigrant experience, has been much explored. Also, the book may have been about Gogol, but the film had already reached its pinnacle in the first half, Gogol's life story somehow cannot compare to it.
