Jhumpa Lahiri’s novels and stories are required reading for those in the contemporary literary know: In 1999, Ms. Lahiri released her breathtaking collection of short stories, “Interpreter of Maladies,” and five years later, her first novel, “The Namesake,” was received with as much fanfare.

The novel, along with “Interpreter,” heralded a new wave of literature written by Indians and by the children of Indian immigrants, many of whom began arriving in America in the 1970s. This first generation of writers wrote about South Asians and their struggles through such everyday episodes as affairs, identity crises, and family outbursts. Ms. Lahiri’s writing became immensely popular: Not only could first-generation Indo-American children relate to the material, but anyone with a slightly dysfunctional family could read her stories and understand the relationships on the page.

It is in due course, then, that the first screenplay related to Ms. Lahiri’s work should be directed by a woman whom some consider to be the world’s most important Indian/Indo-American film director — Mira Nair. Ms. Nair’s last film, the ornate but boring “Vanity Fair” (2004), lacked the personal touches that marked her two most popular films, 1998’s “Salaam Bombay!” and 2001’s “Monsoon Wedding,” both of which featured her tactic of delving into several characters’ personal stories simultaneously without ignoring the complex weave of the overall narrative.

Pairing Ms. Nair with Ms. Lahiri was an obvious — no, more like cosmic — fit in terms of sending Indo-American material to Hollywood. But Ms. Lahiri’s novel, along with the screenplay written by Ms. Nair’s longtime partner and Harvard classmate, Sooni Taraporevala, is an even better match for Ms. Nair’s style of filmmaking than one would think, because the novel tells multiple stories about the members of the one family.

“The Namesake” is an excellent emotional edit of Ms. Lahiri’s book, cutting straight to the heart of the family’s tale without unnecessary literary flourishes. The book, like the movie, begins with the stories of Ashima and Ashoke, two Indians arranged in marriage in the 1970s who eventually move to America.

Much of Ms. Lahiri’s novel focuses on the adult life of their son, Gogol Ganguli, named after his father’s favorite author, Nikolai Gogol. Gogol’s prominent placement in the book is almost required, as he is, technically, “the namesake.” Ms. Nair’s movie does Gogol’s parents better justice; of course, it helps that they are played brilliantly by the Bollywood actors Irrfan Khan and Tabu.

The movie begins in India in the late 1960s as Ashoke boards a train that tragically derails and crashes. He is the only survivor. Later in the film, Ms. Nair flashes back to Ashoke holding a bloody hand aloft from the wreckage with the pages of Nikolai Gogol’s stories fluttering in shards next to him. The visual association between Nikolai Gogol and Ashoke is immediate. As Ashima says simply in the film during the birth of her son, “We all came from Gogol’s overcoat,” referring to Nikolai’s most famous work, and the gifts of her husband and her son.

Gogol, played by Kal Penn, is true to the movie’s description of the Russian author: He’s selfish, wishywashy, and incommunicative. But Gogol and his sister, Sonia (played by Sahira Nair), suit the story that Ms. Nair is telling. The two children are emphatically American. The struggle that Ashoke and Ashima face in raising their children is in passing along the values of Indian culture: Stay close to your parents, marry well, and always make your family a priority.

These are values that all parents aspire to pass to their children. But in this case — when two Indian parents struggle to identify on a basic level with their American children — the task seems much harder, and Ashima, played by Tabu, captures the struggle well, in one instance showing a glimpse of physical pain at not being able to talk to her son on his birthday.

Mr. Penn, who is being promoted as the star of this film, is eventually overwhelmed by the much more experienced acting of Mr. Khan and Tabu. He is unfortunately stereotyped in the beginning of the film as a pot-smoking teenager, a throwback to his most famous role as Kumar in “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.”

Mr. Penn has his own moment in the film when Gogol asks his wife, Moushumi, if she’s having an affair. Gogol seethes and screams at Moushumi (played smartly as smarmy and promiscuous by Zuleikha Robinson). But at other times, Mr. Penn is vacant and passive, as when Gogol discloses to his mother that Moushumi is leaving him. He hiccups one sob, and is done emoting. Ashima, on the other hand, picks up the flag and comforts her son, continuing where Mr. Penn abruptly stopped.

Mr. Khan’s intelligent, calm approach to Ashoke underlies the lifelong nightmares that his character suffers after the train accident. And Tabu’s varied ways of expressing her emotions are exactly the modes of acting Ms. Nair positively exploits: When Ashima, for instance, learns that her husband has died, she rushes around her house, turning on every light, and ends the scene screaming in the front yard.

Ms. Nair could not have chosen two better actors to play the kinds of immigrants who are confused by the actions of their American children. Moreover, Ms. Nair cuts to the story of “The Namesake” more efficiently than does Ms. Lahiri’s book. Whereas the book focuses on the life of one man, Gogol, Ms. Nair captures the true meaning of the word “namesake”: She shows how two parents sacrifice and struggle for the happiness of their children. In that, Ashima and Ashoke immortalize themselves as the best kind of parents any child can ask for.