The Namesake (USA 2006, 122min, dir: Mira Nair, cast: Kal Penn, Tabu, Jacinda Barrett, Brooke Smith, Irrfan Khan)

The girl your parents really want you to marry is sexy, hot, dangerous and fickle. Is this too wonderful even to dream? Let’s add this: you are both first generation American-born immigrants from India and marrying one of your own satisfies the fine print on your birth certificate. Gogol’s struggle with his name, his culture, and his place in the American parade is an everyman tale that will bring tears and nods of recognition to the face of anyone who has ever had to break free from parents raised in the old country and find his/her place in the great saga we call these United States.

I guess this description applies to all of us (unless you are a Native American). Mira Nair is a most talented filmmaker (when she’s not making clunkers like Amelia). I’d love to take Namesake back to show the Pilgrims’ kids at Plymouth Rock back in about 1640 (if AMC had opened Plymouth Rock 18 stadium seating multiplex by then). They’d sit in their white bib collars, eating multicolored maze popcorn, and shouting, “Go thee dude, right on thou.”

The energy of these characters as they the search for place and meaning is common to all of us whether we came to the US from India, Ukraine or Burkina Faso. The story has been told before in many ways. Elia Kazan’s “Amerika” is one I especially remember. And here it is Mira Nair’s turn to reawaken the ageless saga of the New World and bring the same tears to our eyes as “by the rivers of Babylon, where we sat down, and cried our eyes when we remembered Zion.”

Strangers we are in a strange world, but our collective stories are the lullabies that keep us safe. See “Namesake” when you have the time to dream.