Having seen this few years ago, the first thought was what it had to do with the India-Pakistan partition in 1947. The film neither shed light on the actual circumstances involved nor addressed the social, economic or political ramifications of the massive uprooting of Northwest India into two separate nations.
The partition was not about one family, it was about thousands. Nothing in the movie even tries to address this basic fact. Unknown multitudes were left behind. Many lost everything in the shuffle. The politics of why it happened has been brushed aside as inconsequential, when that in fact is why the *historical account* is so riveting. Six decades later, the two countries are still divided over those political and religious issues, ready to go to war at a moment's notice. That this needed to be pointed out shows how out-of-context the movie really is. And then she goes and calls it 'Earth'! Get off your high horse, woman.
Mehta is a film-maker who makes stuff for Western consumption. That is fine but she should refrain from taking liberties with Indian/Pakistani audiences who went through the "horror-show" and survived to tell their stories. Mehta should have watched the Hindi TV serial Buniyaad to get SOME clue. Useless side elements filled up the lack of narrative in the film. The characters are totally unempathic and one fails to connect to anyone except the little girl. And what can one say about the direction or technical side of Mehta's "human-interest piece"? Not much.
And if this really was Lenny's story, why muddle it all up with a hare-brained depiction of such a monumental calamity??? If you can only deal with a serious subject with the passing curiosity of an outsider, and have no maturity or emotional depth when interpreting its impact on an entire sub-continent, WHY BOTHER TO DELVE INTO IT AT ALL??
The partition was not about one family, it was about thousands. Nothing in the movie even tries to address this basic fact. Unknown multitudes were left behind. Many lost everything in the shuffle. The politics of why it happened has been brushed aside as inconsequential, when that in fact is why the *historical account* is so riveting. Six decades later, the two countries are still divided over those political and religious issues, ready to go to war at a moment's notice. That this needed to be pointed out shows how out-of-context the movie really is. And then she goes and calls it 'Earth'! Get off your high horse, woman.
Mehta is a film-maker who makes stuff for Western consumption. That is fine but she should refrain from taking liberties with Indian/Pakistani audiences who went through the "horror-show" and survived to tell their stories. Mehta should have watched the Hindi TV serial Buniyaad to get SOME clue. Useless side elements filled up the lack of narrative in the film. The characters are totally unempathic and one fails to connect to anyone except the little girl. And what can one say about the direction or technical side of Mehta's "human-interest piece"? Not much.
And if this really was Lenny's story, why muddle it all up with a hare-brained depiction of such a monumental calamity??? If you can only deal with a serious subject with the passing curiosity of an outsider, and have no maturity or emotional depth when interpreting its impact on an entire sub-continent, WHY BOTHER TO DELVE INTO IT AT ALL??