EARTH A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1999 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): ** 1/2
Indian writer/director Deepa Mehta, as she showed in her previous movie (FIRE), knows how to construct a film with great visual panache. Her downfall is that her stories and her actors remain at the level of soap operas -- lovely to look at but lacking much substance.
EARTH, her latest film, is set in 1947 against the backdrop of the end of the British Empire on the Indian subcontinent. As the story opens, young adult friends are smiling, laughing and joking with one another. This will soon end as the various factions (Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs) begin to fight turf battles over the land.
Told from the eyes of an eight-year-old Parsee girl nicknamed Lenny-baby (Maaia Sethna), the story begins with her nanny, Shanta (Nandita Das), flirting with her two boyfriends, Dil Navaz (Aamir Khan) and Hasan (Rahul Khanna).
It is a happy time. Typical of the fluffy dialog is a gorgeous scene during a spring festival as colorful kites dot the heavens. "Treat it like a lover," Hasan tells Shanta, his arms around her as he guides her kite string with his strong, masculine hands. "Woo it. When it acts difficult, let it go."
The tranquility of the movie's first half dissolves into civil unrest in the second half. Most of the action consists of mobs storming up and down streets as they shout insults and slogans. The violence, which happens mainly off-screen, is described by witnesses and victims. One boy, who hid under naked bodies, says that when he last saw his mother, she was nude and hung by her hair to a ceiling fan.
Mehta's downfall is that she continues to be more of a visual stylist than a story teller. Most scenes are handsome, but few contain much significant content. The film's beauty ends up working against itself as the people become cartoons in something like a children's story of an historical event. When bad things happen, they seem distant and unreal so that the events pack little emotional wallop.
EARTH runs 1:44. The film is in English as well as Hindi, Urdu, Parsee and Punjabi with English subtitles. It is not rated but might be PG-13 for language and violence. It would be fine for teenagers.
Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com
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