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Film
Review |
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Earth.
(India and Canada, 1991). Directed by Deepa Mehta. 101 mins. In English,
Hindi and Urdu, with English subtitles. VHS and DVD available generally.
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Earth, based on Bapsi Sidhwa's semi-autobiographical
novel Cracking India, dramatizes the Indian Partition, exploring
communal identities and intercommunal as they harden in Partition-era Lahore.
In the popular imagination, it is "ancient hatred" that animate third-world
civil conflict. Earth takes strong exception to this view. In this
film, religious conflict emerges from an ill-planned Partition, not from
centuries-old rivalry. In doing so, Earth can stand in usefully
for similar events elsewhere in the globe, from the Biafra war to the pogroms
against "Shirazis" in post-independence Zanzibar. |
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Earth is, however, no mere anticolonial
screed. While colonialism sets the stage, the Raj itself is marginal to
the film's narrative. A triptych of scenes—two set in a park and one in
a restaurant—neatly encapsulate for students the changing relationships
among India's three major religious communities. Parallels with the more
recent events, from the Balkan wars to Iraq, should easily fuel class discussions.
So too should the fact that both Pakistani and Indian governments banned
the film. Graphic depictions of violence and more sexually explicit scenes
than one might expect to find in a Bollywood epic might, however, require
careful handling. |
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Fritz
Umbach
John Jay College, City University of New York |
