Movie
Review:
The movie Earth, is the second film
in Deepa Mehta Elements Trilogy. It focuses on the interactions between several
individuals living in Lahore, during the time of partition. The movie’s main
characters are Lenny, a girl from a Parsi family, Dil Navaz, a Muslim Candy
vendor, Shanta, Lenny’s Hindu maid, and Hassan, a Muslim man who is a local
Masseur.
The movie’s focus lies upon
examining the effects of partition on the people of India through looking at a
microcosm of its occurrence in Lahore. One of the main focuses of the movie is
on the dynamics of a local group of friends whom Lenny and Shanta regularly
spend time with (this group includes Hassan and Shanta). The group is composed
of a few Muslims; a couple of Hindu’s a Sikh man. In the beginning of the
movie, it is shown how tightly knit the group is, with all of them treating
each other with kindness and affection and spending their time together in
laughter and happiness. This small group is meant to represent the diversity of
different cultures and religions in India pre-partition and how they all lived
together in relative harmony. For centuries and centuries, different religions
groups had lived together in India and despite their differences, had found a
way to coexist. However, that dynamic would rapidly shift during partition, and
have lasting effects well into the future.
As the film progresses and partition
begins, we see that families from Lahore are slowly leaving to Amritsar one by
one and others from Amritsar are migrating to Lahore. This occurs since Lahore
was given to Pakistan, since it was a predominantly Muslim area, while Amritsar
remained Indian Territory. Lenny’s family decides to stay behind because they
are Parsi, and Parsi’s are considered neutral, since they are such a small, noninterfering
group. However, the Hindu and Sikh minority within Lahore fear violence from
the Muslim majority, while the exact opposite process goes on on the other side
of the border.
We see this fear, and anger between
Hindus and Sikhs and Muslims, slowly alter the interactions in the once tight
knit group. As time passes, the religious differences between the individuals
of the group becomes the topic of conversation more and more often and causes
the group members to insult one another on the basis of their religions.
The breaking point is reached near
the end of the end of the movie, when the Ice Candy Man and the muslim Butcher
(another member of the friend group), come along with an angry Muslim mob to
Lenny’s house. They demand that Lenny’s parents tell them where Shanta is, and
are targeting her because of her Hindu religion. The anger and viciousness with
which the butcher demands to see Shanta is shocking, seeing as how he was so
close to her near the beginning of the movie. In addition, saddest turn of
events is how the Ice Candy Man is the one who finally, with the help of Lenny,
rats out the location of Shanta and proceeds to take her away with the mob in
an oxen-driven cart. The Ice Candy Man, who loved Shanta, who showed so much
affection to her throughout the movie, was the one who finally ruined her life
and possible lead her either to her death or to forced marriage.
This transformation of the
individuals in the friends group and the dynamic of the friends group as a
whole is meant to represent the larger events taking place in the region as a
whole. Friends, neighbors, even relatives were turning against each and
butchering each other purely based on the difference of their religions. Deepa
Mehta, the film’s director, attempts to show how absurd and condemnable this
situation of violence was at large to show how quickly such a close knit group
of friends was broken up for no real reason at all, for completely artificial,
an meaningless differences in belief.
Reading
Response:
Under
British rule and even before British rule, the reason the different religions
factions got along in India was because at the time there was no real sense of
nationalism. India was split into various regional kingdoms, some with a
majority Muslim community and many with a majority Hindu community. Muslims,
who were a minority overall, had no reason to fear the Hindu majority, since
communities far apart, although they may have been of the same religion, were
not tied together purely by the identity of their religions. Muslims and
Hindu’s living in each region and the representatives for each region, placed
more of an emphasis on fulfilling the desires and needs of each region, rather
than on allying with their religious counterparts in the government. So since
at the time, there was no major Hindu alliance in the government, and because
of British assurances of the rights of minorities, the two religious groups
lived in relative harmony. As partition grew closer, however, and Jinnah and
his colleagues at the all India Muslim league were excluded more and more from
the dealings of Congress, they began to feel threatened. And, what finally lead
Jinnah and other leaders to ask for the creation of Pakistan, was not, in fact,
a unified cry for partition from the Muslim majority areas of the country, it
was the fact that those areas were not unified properly by their religious
ties. If Jinnah and other Muslim leaders had seen a willingness amongst their
constituents to unite, they would have felt safer in terms of gaining enough
seats in the newly independent government.
But since that was not the case, they requested East and West Pakistan
be created.
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