Shaun de Waal Movie of the week
The division of India on the eve of independence in 1947 has left lasting scars on that country and Pakistan, the chunk of the old India that was chopped off to become a Muslim country while the rest was dominated by Hindus and Sikhs.
The departing British (supported in this by the Muslim League and the Indian Congress Party, though opposed by Mahatma Gandhi) were allegedly trying to prevent the adherents of different religions turning on one another when the colonisers left, but did they make it all much worse? An estimated million people died in the carnage that followed, and some 11-million were displaced as they urgently crossed the newly demarcated borders – Muslims into Pakistan, Hindus and Sikhs into India.
Having fought three wars, the two countries are still at loggerheads today, with a tendency to wave their brand-new nuclear weapons at each other. The last such spat – in fact, a spat which could possibly end
with the deaths of millions -was taking place just as Indian director Deepa Mehta was making Earth in her native land.
Based on Bapsi Sidhwa’s autobiographical novel Cracking India, Earth is set in Lahore, where Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs had generally lived in peace with one another until independence and partition loomed. (Lahore became part of Pakistan, but the film had to be shot in New Delhi.) The events are seen through the eyes of eight- year-old Lenny (Maia Sethna); her family is Parsee, which is to say Zoroastrians of Persian descent, and thus supposedly neutral. Like the Swiss, says her father hopefully, even as their community is torn apart. But neutrality is impossible.
Images of pre-partition harmony are provided by the group of men gathered around Shanta, Lenny’s beautiful young Hindu ayah or nanny (Nandita Das). They meet in the park, men of differing adherences, united by old bonds of friendship and an admiration for Shanta. Closest to actually attaining her affections are the masseur Hasan (Rahul Khanna) and the “Ice Candy Man”, Dil Navaz (Aamir Khan).
But partition and its consequences will reduce lifelong friends to mortal enemies, turning hitherto peaceable people murderous. This is the tragedy played out in Earth, a tragedy of which Lenny, Shanta, Hasan and Dil Navaz become emblematic.
Earth is the second part of a trilogy Mehta began with Fire, the controversial story of two lower-middle-class Indian women in arranged marriages who become lesbian lovers. Mehta has said that Fire was about the politics of sexuality, Earth is about the politics of nationalism, and the third film of the trilogy, Water (What about Air? Shouldn’t she be doing a quartet?), will be about the politics of religion. Clearly, though, in India, politics and religion are inseparable. Mehta emigrated to Canada in 1973, but she is clearly still deeply involved with her homeland. She has expressed admiration for filmmakers Satyajit Ray and Vittorio de Sica, known for their low-key realism; she also esteems the work of Emir Kusturica, Pedro Almodvar and Peter Weir.
Her own work, on the evidence of this film, is closer to Weir’s than to Ray’s. Earth is not very earthy. It’s not that it is lacking in realism, but its world is prettily presented: it all seems bathed in buttery yellow light. That gilded look works well when we are in the genteel, sophisticated realm of the Anglophile Parsee family, but it makes the movie’s darker moments, by contrast, seem slightly artificial. That said, those moments do not lack for drama, and there can never be too many reminders of the dangers of politico- religious bigotry.