Earth

EARTH will seem familiar to anyone who has ever seen a historical epic. Its tale of political and national disjunction and horror is filtered through a precariously neutral upper-middle class family, in particular through the eyes of a young child, a scenario not dissimilar to, say, EMPIRE OF THE SUN. Further, this child, beautiful but lame, is somehow a figure for India itself, its scar of partition masked by her disability, or an embodiment of this soon-to-be-lost, dangerously naive innocence, scenes of great personal intimacy contrast with scenes of mass violence, until the two collide in the gut-wrenching climax. As with any historical epics, the film's sweeping smoothness conceals formal ruptures, as the film moves registers from the 'naturalistic' or narratively, psychologically plausible to Expressionism, to blatant allegory. This internal conflict may mirror the struggle over boundaries the film narrates.

If the film is conventional is outline, it is also intelligent, beautiful and economical in a way most stodgy historical epics are not. Its predominantly Western structure is filtered through with a restrained Bollywood sensuality, and, in the first half especially, after one has gotten used to the rather stilted dialogue and stylised situations, one is astounded by the caressing fluidity of the camerawork; the uncommon beauty of compositions, especially indoors, where the essentially muted 'earth' colours of the decor are pierced by unearthly shards of light; the profusion of dazzling colours, in costumes, and especially in the horrific marriage sequence, undermining the strained sobriety of most historical epics; the unforced breaks into song and dance, the accumulation of vignettes, some comic, some full of joy and promise, some bursting with foreboding, that give a sense of life being lived, a life already fragile in status, waiting to be destroyed; the unabashed use of melodrama, its critical framing device (in one horrible scene, the protagonists watch helplessly from a balcony the strangely beautiful conflict, passive like us the audience), and its emotional demands on the audience I realise that much of my pleasure comes from a racist 'Orientalism', a projection of my desires of exoticism and Otherness on the East, but my own country has a traumatic history of British Imperialism and partitions, so I don't feel too guilty.

The first half is as good as anything in cinema this year, once one has got used to the shifts in register. It is full of the autumnal sadness of a Chekhov play, or Ray's CHARULATA, or LE REGLE DU JEU, where we observe people living life, being friends, making love playing games, while we know history is sadistically poised on the brink, waiting to crush everything. Mehta never falls into nostalgia for this doomed idyll - she records the legacy of the British Empire; the horrors of the caste system; the emotional repression, the arranged marriages between senile paedophiles and pre-pubescent girls. But this section is also full of epiphany, the thrill of the sexual chase, friendship, poetry and, above all, comedy, all the things about to be distorted and destroyed by history as it performs a body snatching operation onto people we have come to love and turns them into vicious murderers.

The second half is an unrelenting catalogue of jolting spasms of violence. Day gives way to night, earthy browns and sun to blackness, friendship and love to death and hate. The film is also a bildungsroman, the tale of the development of a young girl as she learns about life, love, family, gender, language, society, history, culture, politics a development cruelly cut short, distorted, vandalised - when we see the charming dew-eyed narrator half a century later, emotionally in ruins as she stands self-effacingly in the ruins of Imperial pomp (an amazing shot, the film's sparing use of ruined architecture gives the film on occasion a ghostly feel), we sense irreperable loss.

This question resonated in my mind as the credits rolled. The release of this movie came at a high point in India's history - 50 years after independence from the British.

As an Indian-born American this film had an intense emotional impact on me, as it did with my best friends sitting to my right and left - a Muslim and a Sikh. It seems melodramatic but we sat in our seats, tears in our eyes, stunned.

One of the things I look forward to after every movie going experience is the inevitable discussion that follows. All three of us were silent for almost half an hour. It dawned on us that we could have been the group of friends who were so close at the beginning only to be divided by our demons in the name of religion at the end.

As an aspiring film-maker, I would like to congratulate Deepa Mehta for her courage and determination in presenting such amazing human stories. In an industry where Bollywood sachharine seems to prevail, it is reassuring to see a true artistic voice strike a lyrical chord with the world.

She makes me proud to be Indian first and foremost.

A beautiful and haunting film, "Earth" is set in India during 1947, which saw independence granted and the Indian sub-continent divided between Muslim Pakistan and (largely) Hindu India. History is seen through the eyes of Lenny, an eight-year-old girl from the numerically tiny Parsee sect, the members of which are professedly "neutral" in the conflict between Hindu and Muslim. The action takes place in Lahore, in the Punjab, an ancient cosmopolitan city where Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Parsee lived side by side in reasonable harmony until partition, when unspeakable violence broke out, as it did in many other parts of India. Over a million people died in the sub-continent and perhaps 12 million people fled their homes.

The film, based on the autobiographical novel "Cracking India" by Bapsi Sidhwa, concentrates on the effect the civil turmoil has on personal relationships. Somehow, politics brings out the worst in everyone; submerged resentments and trivial jealousies fuel shocking atrocities. Even innocent little Lenny manages to act badly, despite her "neutral" status.

Despite the presence of at least one "Bollywood" star (Aamir Khan) the director, Deepa Mehta, has not made a crowd-pleaser here. There are survivors, but no surviving heroes. The story unfolds first at a leisurely pace, gaining speed as independence day approaches and ends in a montage of mobs, destruction and violence. Every scene is beautifully composed and almost every part sensitively played. Maia Sethna as Lenny, Nandita Das as her beautiful young nanny Shasta , Rahul Khanna as Hasan, Shastas' lover and Aamir Khan as Dil Navaz the 'ice candy man" are all stand-outs. While not actually filmed in Lahore (the authorities there were not keen, it seems) the film evokes superbly a hot, ancient and troubled land. The whole style of the film is quite different from anything to emerge out of Hollywood and that alone makes it worth seeing.

It is suggested in the film that perhaps the villain here was that old standby, human nature. It does seem, though, that the British India administration (represented here only by one drunken official at a dinner party) and particularly the British government, had a lot to answer for. The twenty-five years or so leading up to independence were marked by the failure of successive conservative British governments to allow a truly responsible democracy to emerge in India when it was quite clear by the end of World War One that independence was inevitable. (The white Dominions on the other hand were practically pushed into independence.) Then, when the post-war Labour government decided to grant independence it did so with unseemly and disastrous haste. No, the chief villain was perfidious Albion, or rather British "muddling through". Here we get a beautiful, moving, elegiac account of the victims of bad colonial policy driven by racism and unenlightened self-interest.

Deepa Mehta lets us in the opening scene the theme of her film as a small girl smashes a plate on the floor and asks her puzzled mother, "Can you break a country?" The film shows exactly how that happens. The first half of the film depicts an idyllic society. The scenes in the park are reminiscent of Eden, as the nurse Shanta holds court amongst her Hindu, Muslim and Sikh suitors. The kite-flying scene is probably the lightest-hearted in the picture. But gradually the cracks start to appear, driving apart friends and lovers. The hatred which spreads as partition of the country approaches is shown to be a madness coming from deep within the human heart, which twists and deforms relationships. The worst betrayal in this film results from an irreconcilable confusion of loyalties in a trusting heart. This film presents a disturbing but authentic picture of human nature.

The score by A.R. Rahman is a powerful blend of Indian and western film music, lightening the joyous moments (such as the kite-flying scene) and deepening the foreboding in other scenes (such as the train of death).

This movie has attempted and succeeded at trying to get a handle on the brutal days of 1947 when British India was separated into independent India and Pakistan. I would suggest that this movie be a required viewing for anyone studying the past and present of these two countries. Lahore of 1947 is not very different from Sarajevo of the 90s. And this too is no fiction. Mayhem depicted in the movie is *very* tame compared to what actually happened. It is my ferevent hope that the people of India and Pakistan view this movie and hope "Never Again".