Showing posts with label emigration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emigration. Show all posts

24 August 2022

Recensione libro: Vivo Altrove (2010) by Claudia Cucchiarato, ****


Sinossi

Gabriele, ingegnere navale a Oslo, Davide che fa l'autore teatrale a Berlino, Giulia che sta a Barcellona, canta in una band, e ha avuto un colpo di fortuna... Sono l'Italia fuori dall'Italia. Sono i giovani, sempre più numerosi, che hanno scelto di vivere lontani da casa, alla ricerca di un lavoro che qui non hanno trovato, o di una vita diversa. Questo libro racconta le loro storie, che sono piene di vitalità e venate di malinconia, scanzonate, tenere, in fondo preoccupanti. Sono il ritratto di un paese virtuale, e di un futuro, forse, mancato: perché il paese che questi ragazzi hanno deciso di abbandonare continua a non ascoltarli.



Recensione

Una serie di storie personali di intraprendenti giovani italiani costretti ad emigrare per poter essere professionalmente apprezzati. Ci sono passato anche io, e molti miei amici. Una volta emigravano i braccianti con la valigia di cartone, oggi oltre i due terzi degli italiani che emigrano sono laureati. Scritto nel 2010 ma sempre valido!


24 March 2013

Film review: Namesake (2006), by Mira Nair, ****

Synopsis

Namesake is a Bollywood drama by Mira Nair, based on the best-selling novel by Jhumpa Lahiri. Ashoke (Irfan Khan) and Ashima (Tabu) are a young couple who are brought together in an arranged marriage and soon leave Calcutta to seek their fortune in America. Before long, Ashima gives birth to a baby boy, and pressed to choose a name, they dub the infant Nikhil (Kal Penn), though he soon picks up the nickname Gogol, after Ashoke's favourite author. By the time the child is old enough to attend school, he insists upon being called Gogol at all times, and he displays little interest in his Indian heritage.

Several years on, Gogol has decided he wants to be called Nick (and is now played by Kal Penn) and has become a thoroughly Americanised teenager, openly rebelling against his parents, smoking marijuana in his room, and dating Maxine (Jacinda Barrett), a preppy blonde from a wealthy family. Ashoke and Ashima are uncertain about how to deal with their son's attempts to cut himself off from their culture, but Nick begins expressing some uncertainty himself when he meets Moushumi (Zuleikha Robinson), a beautiful girl who also comes from a family of Indian expatriates.


Review

Multiple stories in this film. Indian immigration in the 1970s, with a bright young engineering student who finds opportunities at M.I.T., the dream university for many scientists around the world. What a coincidence, I went to M.I.T. in the seventies, same university and same decade! Some of my classmates and best friends were just like Ashoke!

Also a touching family love story, with the problems faced by parents of adolescent kids in every country.

The strong role of the family bonds in Indian culture is a message not to be missed, and from which we in the West have much to learn.

I found the puzzlement of the American born kids when they go back to visit India the most entertaining and amusing part of the film.

Everything rotates around the quirky name that Ashoke has chosen for his son, and the meaning of this name which only becomes clear to the son after his father's death.

See more of my reviews of films about India in this blog.

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For the US buy or download here




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