Movie Review – Earth

A movie which you can’t “part” ways with easily

Don’t go by the posters, with the face of Aamir Khan occupying three fourth of the frame, it looks like any normal revenge saga of a leading hero. But thankfully as I saw it as a part of Elements trilogy and knew that it was going to be a heavy movie, I wasn’t perturbed by the poster. The film which though starts on a dull note when compared to the first movie, ‘Fire’, quickly picks up and keeps you tense throughout. The movie matches its predecessor, if not, only gets better.

The film, more than anything, was brave. That’s the advantage of being a movie which was not being Bollywood, yet has the Bollywood sensibilities and mixes it well with Hollywood Persona. Thankfully so, because it was not made by an Indian resident. How ‘Fire’ not being in Hindi wasn’t affecting, ‘Earth’ not being in English too was not affecting. This shows how language is never a barrier no matter about what region you’re making the film. Or maybe the language was optimally used so that the difference didn’t matter at all.

The film takes some time to come to grips. Of course it has an effervescent Nandita Das, an actor whom you couldn’t take your eyes off, who keeps you glued to the screen, regardless of what’s happening on screen. Plus now she was in her home ground, going back to a poor rooted character whom one would instantly sympathize. I missed the charming Nandita Das of ‘Fire’ but doing what she does best, here too she was terrific.

The film is mostly seen through the eyes of Lenny Sethna aka Lenny baby (Maia Sethna) who is a young polio affected kid from a wealthy Parsi family. Her world revolves around her ayah, Shanta (Nandita Das), whose world revolves around Dil Navaz, the Ice-Candy Man (Aamir Khan), and Hassan, the Masseur (Rahul Khanna). Shanta being a naturally flirty attractive woman was naturally a cynosure of all eyes. Initially, may be because we knew Aamir as a big star, or may be due to narrative, it looked like Dil Navaz was actually the one loving Shanta and Hassan was actually lusting on her. The scene where her Pallu falls off, gave that notion but later we get to know that Shanta and Hassan were actually in love.

Religion and politics were talked upon much easily by the friends and for a major part looked like Dil Navaz being a hero. The situation becomes tense post the train scene where Navaz sees a train full of dead bodies. We get to see a lot of violence post that and most of it were quite affecting and effective. But the curious part was, Lenny baby being a rich kid, how was she allowed to go out just so easily with her Ayah when the world around them were tearing apart. That was the only part which felt farfetched.

There was one great scene where Lenny baby on her birthday goes to the terrace of her house and sees a next door kid whose mother was raped by a mob. The exchange of conversation between the Parsi kids and the poor kid looks so in genuine. The kid asks whether they’d like to play with marbles and Lenny asks whether he’d have cake. Sometime before Lenny asks her friend what does ‘rape’ mean, the kid asks Lenny and his friend, what does ‘cake’ mean? In a film which was so violent, this was the most hard hitting scene.

Deepa Mehta has got to be one of the best filmmakers to make sex scenes. It was so good in ‘Fire’ and now in ‘Earth’. May be Nandita Das and Deepa Mehta share a great chemistry which reflects on screen. But here the interesting part of the movie was not the sex scene but the conversation after that. Hassan proposes to Shanta for marriage, which she was initially hesitant but once he says that he’d go to Amritsar and convert to Hinduism, she accepts it. That was a curious scene as to what made her accept him. Whether the decision to move to India or to change his faith. Whatever it was, he looked more honest than her.

The film has an impactful climax which would stay in your head for a while. Wish it could have ended right there instead of a needless flash forward with a voice over. May be it’s just the directors style.