Matinee Show

Mira Nair's The Namesake has already gotten rave reviews in India. It opened in the US in the first week of April in major multiplexes, and has generated a very favourable response in the American press. Most reviewers have mentioned the film's universal and human quality that makes it much more than the story of an Indian/Bengali family's immigrant experience.Indians in the US have largely liked the film, though Bengalis have complained about the 'fake' Bengali accent of the characters.
Something else that everyone seemed to agree on was that Kolkata looked exceptionally beautiful, and not in a 'made-up' kind of way, like, for instance, in Parineeta. I've had American friends in Chicago telling me that the film made them want to visit the city. It is also significant that Indians who had read the novel earlier actually liked the fact that the film was built more around the parents, than the boy, Gogol Ganguli.
In other words, they appreciated that there was more of a first generation immigrant perspective in the film as compared to that of a boy who is American in every way. In fact, though some American reviewers have written that they would have liked to see the white characters in the film better developed, this was not a complaint with NRIs.
Barbara Willard, an American who went to see the movie with a group of her friends, had an instructive point to make. She saw the film with her friends from a ladies reading group, who had read Jhumpa Lahiri's novel together some eight months earlier. Their interest was principally on account of their familiarity with the book. Barbara felt that The Namesake would be a big draw among women who were part of such reading groups.
The reading group, which is far less common in India, is very significant among American women of all age groups. I was informed that ladies reading groups in the US have generated a greater market for certain kinds of publications which are supposed to be 'women-oriented', and publishers are known to promote a new author if they feel that the book will do well in reading groups. Reading group guides are available, and new publications are often tagged with a sheet for reader's response, for market surveys. The Namesake first appeared in paperback in the US in the middle of 2006 when Barbara and her reading group read it.
According to them, the film with its poignancy and human quality will be a success among people who have read the book, but are quick to point out that they expect it to be a somewhat gendered audience.
It was revealing to learn how the reading group phenomenon could affect the sales of a film like The Namesake in the US. It brings to mind the Indian, and more specifically the Bengali, context where in the 50s and 60s, and into the early 70s, it was said that in order to be a hit, a film had to be a success with women. In Kolkata, the 3 p.m. 'matinee' show mainly catered to ladies who could most easily make it to cinema shows in the afternoons, when husbands were away at work and children were at school or taking their afternoon nap.
Ladies of large joint families or women friends from the neighbourhood typically frequented the 'matinee'. During these years, a large number of Bengali films were adapted from novels and short stories. Middle-class women, brought up on a staple of Bankim Chandra, Sarat Chandra or Rabindranath, were often voracious readers. Magazines and puja samkhyas — annual literary editions that carried novels and short stories — were circulated and shared, and there existed spaces, within joint family and neighbourhood structures, akin to the more formalised reading group.
Women, who had very few leisure options apart from reading or movie going, therefore constituted a captive market for literature-based films. During these years, women were the Bengali film industry's mainstay, and literature was often adapted to cinema keeping in mind this constituency. With reading habits changing gradually as more women stepped out of the house in the 70s and 80s, and also with the coming of television, the industry's orientation towards literature was also gradually transformed.
In India, The Namesake has done well not because it is based on a well-known book by a famous author. Its director, Mira Nair, is one of the selling points of the film. The literary connection of cinema is no longer very potent in India.
Yet, it is true that Indian writing in English offers themes and issues that remain under-explored in Indian films, as for instance the Indian immigrant experience.
Indian writing in English did not find any significant resonance in Hindi cinema, primarily because, up until very recently, the principle of the 'all-India market' has held strong for Hindi films. It is only following the multiplex boom post-2001 that we have seen more niche products.
A film like Black Friday, for instance, was made for a selective audience, and yet ran to packed theatres in the metros. Following The Namesake, one might expect a trend of screen adaptations of bestsellers, which would bring new themes into Indian cinema.
The writer is a research fellow at La Trobe University, Melbourne.
The writer is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago.