Earth

‘At the stroke of midnight, while the world sleeps. India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.’

So said India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru approaching midnight on August 14th, 1947. That paragraph was part of Nehru’s Tryst with Destiny speech. India’s Independence, was created by the English quitting India after 250 years and at the same time. the country of Pakistan was created. This breaking up of India was called The Partition, and is the backdrop of Deepa Mehta‘s first film of her Elemental Trilogy. This one is called Earth, and the other two were called Fire, and Water (which I’ve already reviewed).

It is 1947 and we are set up in Lahore. At the time of start of the film, Lahore was a city in India. Partition was announced two days before Nehru’s Tryst with Destiny speech, and with the announcement, Lahore became the capital of Pakistan. Eleven million people were displaced. Hindus, a minority living in Pakistan, wanted to go back to India and be among the majority. Muslims living India wanted to head back to the newly created Pakistan.

The migration of 11 million did not go smoothly. Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims, all of whom found a way to live together before Partition, now found that no one could be trusted. Lifelong friends now wanted to slaughter each other. More than 1 million people were killed in the communal violence.

In Mehta’s Earth, the story begins with a small microcosm of people. The story unfolds through the eyes of a handicapped eight year old girl called Lenny-baby. She was under the care of her ayah or baby-sitter called Shanta (Nandita Das). Shanta was employed by an upper middle class Parsee family. Parsees were a distinct minority religion in India and as such they practiced relative neutrality – meaning they didn’t side with the Hindus, the Sikhs, or the Muslims.

Shanta was a beautiful single girl who didn’t lack for admirers. Among the admirers were a Sikh, a Muslim, and a Hindu boy. This group met regularly and were all friends. Only the Partition was causing cracks in their personal friendship foundations. Not only could we see it, but for those involved it was evident as well.  Just as it was across the city of  Lahore, and the rest of the country.

Water (2005)

A young married girl is about to lose her husband to a disease as the film begins. Once the husband has died, and despite her young age, she is now a widow and her options are limited.

• She could marry the younger brother of her dead husband.
• She could throw herself on her husband’s funeral pyre.
• She could join an ashram and give the rest of her life to spiritual devotion.

According to the sacred texts:

• A window should be long-suffering until death, self-restrained and chaste.
• A virtuous wife who remains chaste when her husband has died, goes to heaven.
• A woman who is unfaithful to her husband is reborn in the womb of a jackal.

So say the Holy scriptures as written in the Dharamshastras.

Soon after the cremation, the young child-widow has her head shaved, she’s made to wear a basic and unadorned white garment, and is brought to a temple to live out her remaining life, in the company of other women in the same circumstances – that of being a widow.

They are isolated, men are not permitted in the ashram, and other than as beggars, or shopping for essentials, they infrequently mix with society

The date is 1938. The place is Benares now called Varanasi, India. The former young married female’s name is Chuyia. She is 8 years old.

The film is called Water (2005) and is the last film in a trilogy of elemental films, directed and written by Deepa Mehta. The other two titles are Earth (1998), and Fire (1996).

Now I will grant you that a film about the circumstances about widows in India, circa 1938, doesn’t exactly jump out as a ‘must see‘ movie. But this is more than a simple movie about ‘societal injustice‘.

Besides the young child-widow, there are three more characters that require your attention and concern.

Trishna

In 1891, Thomas Hardy‘s novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles was published. It didn’t hit the book seller stalls immediately as it was serialized in a newspaper. While the original publication received mixed reviews, the book would later be called a classic novel and is likely still being read in English Lit classes even today.

The novel was produced as a silent film in 1913 and 1924. In the modern era, in 1979, Roman Polanski adapted the novel and released his film called Tess which starred Nastassja Kinski and Peter Firth. In 2008, the novel was made into a multi-part mini-series which aired on television (on BBC and in the USA on the PBS Masterpiece Classics series).

Which brings us to 2011. British Film Director Michael Winterbottom adapted the novel, or used it as the basis of his film; updating the setting from 19th Century England to the 21st century in modern-day India. Winterbottom has said that during the 19th Century, Britain had evolved from a rural and agrarian economy to a place that was the most dynamic urban and industrialized economy in the world. Yet is was a place where cultural differences not only still existed between the upper and lower class strata of society, but the whole fabric of society was based upon keeping the classes separate. Winterbottom went on to point out that it would be difficult to recreate that period of history, in a period film, in today’s England.

India, on the other hand, still offered, in its small towns and rural areas, places where class differences, economic differences, and cultural and educational differences where right there in front of people; there at the same time as societal changes were occurring. Yet there were still family traditions, outlooks on sexual conduct, and economic and religious customs that were still resistant to changes brought about by modern thinking. So that was thinking and background about why the film was set in India.

Trishna is both a love story and a tragedy. One could say it is the story of a woman who was destroyed by falling in love and her own circumstances.

Today’s Special

Today’s Special is a 2009 film directed by David Kaplan. It’s a feel good film about food, and I’m offering this review with a dedication to those folks who regularly ride the 7 Train from Queens, NY into Manhattan. This is the subway that takes you from the Main St. Station in Flushing, Queens, past Citifield, home of the New York Mets, straight through Queens, finally going beneath the East river for a stop under the lower depths of Grand Central Station before ending in Times Square. That line passes through Jackson Heights with two stops that might be called Little India of Queens. And it is in this area that most of the film takes place.

Samir is a sous chef working in a swanky French Restaurant in Manhattan. Basically a sous chef manages the kitchen, controls the supplies and inventory, oversees the staff, sees that the kitchen meets the safety standards and the sanitation codes, and is in charge when the chef is not present. On occasion, the sous chef might even cook.

Well, Samir is passed over for the job of chef at a new restaurant that his current chef is taking over. He quits and decides to set his sails for France, where he hopes to apprentice under a top Parisian chef.  His father owns the Tandoor Palace, a small neighborhood Indian restaurant, that is distinctly pedestrian at best. It’s not making any money at all.

Samir must tell his parents of his plans. They’re well-meaning but they can’t see or appreciate Samir’s goals. His Dad is disappointed in him (he’s not a doctor) and his Mom works furiously to find him a wife. His father is crushed by this news. You are quitting a job that pays you good money for a job, that you don’t have yet, that will pay you nothing?

Yes, Dad. I’d be an apprentice.

That leads to a sudden and dangerous shortness of breath for the older man. He’s just suffered a mild coronary. Samir then agrees to hold off on his plans and help out at the restaurant for a while. That’s the set up.

Samir is played by Aasif Mandvi who not only sounds like Al Pacino but also bears a strong resemblance to that noted actor

Cooking With Stella

If you read my posts regularly then you know I have a fondness for films that are about restaurants and or cooking. I’ve had pretty good luck dealing with films or an occasional TV series from Japan that fit into this genre. So when another film in this niche popped onto my radar – I couldn’t resist it.

This time we are looking at a Canadian/Indian made film that was set in Delhi, India, and was directed by Dilip Mehta. Dilip and his older sister, Deepa Mehta co-wrote the film. Deepa is herself a noted film director, most widely known for her series of three dramatic films entitled Earth, Fire, and Water that are about the nature of human relationships.

This time out, a Canadian diplomat has been posted to the Canadian Embassy in New Delhi, India. You will be surprised to discover, only moments into the film, that the diplomat is the wife, and her spouse is a house-husband who is also a chef. They arrive, as do most flights from the West very early in the morning which provides us with the first of many visual treats – the drive into town through the morning mists.

They’ve taken housing within the Embassy compound, and are pleased to discover that their condo includes the services of a cook/housekeeper named Stella. Now Stella has worked for the Canadian High Commission for 30 years, serving different families who have accepted the diplomatic postings to New Delhi. The film is entitled Cooking With Stella, and indeed, she is a superb cook.

You bring apple pie. Why would I do that? Because white people like Indian pudding and Indian people like apple pie …

However, that’s not all she is – but, for the moment –  I’ll leave that thought on the side, and get back to it.

The film is set in the present (2009) and was filmed on location in both New Delhi as well as Delhi. We are treated to the beautiful visuals of New and Old Delhi like the Rajpath, the India Gate, the Jama Masjid Mosque, and the Indian government and administrative buildings with their distinctive Edwin Lutyens designed, Rajput styled architechture.

We also visit various parks and some of the shopping bazaars likely in the Old Delhi area near Connaught Way, and everywhere we go, the colors are beautiful, the lighting is absolutely perfect and the film will dazzle you visually.

Kahaani: A superb top notch thriller!

You’re a London-based housewife. Your husband took an overseas job but because of the internet tools like email, video messaging, Skype, and inexpensive inter-country phone service, communication is not only possible, but is also convenient as well as inexpensive. All seems well until the communications stop. You can’t raise your husband by phone, or by email, or even by landline. A few days become a few weeks, and not one word is coming forth. So you must travel nearly 5000 miles or nearly 8000 kilometers in search of your missing husband. To a city you don’t know, as well as to a place where you do not know anyone. By the way, you’re in the 7th month of your pregnancy.

When we first see her, Mrs. Vidya Bagchi, she’ll be approaching the exit of the Arrivals terminal in the airport in Kolkata, West Bengal, India.

So begins the story of Vidya Bagchi, a pregnant woman searching for her missing husband. This is one of the finest thrillers I’ve seen this year, or any other year. Actually when we meet her for the first time we have already witness a terrorist attack on a Kolkata Metro train. A deadly poisonous gas was released on a crowded train, and a few hundred people died. This event predates the main story of the film by two years.

Vidya and Sub-Inspector Satyoki aka Rana

The film was co-written, directed, and produced by Sujoy Ghosh. He worked with a shoe string budget of 8 Crore Indian Rupees which is the equivalent of $1.6 Million in US dollars. But despite the relatively miniscule budget by our standards, this is not a small or inexpensive looking film. In fact, you’d have no idea that it had been made for so little money.

Vidya Bagchi is played by India’s leading film actress at this time: Vidya Balan. She brings an inner strength, a resolve to the character that is ideal. You can’t take your eyes off her. She ‘s a stranger in a strange land. Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, is a large city with a population above 4 million. Count the outlying districts, metropolitan Kolkata’s population exceeds 14 million. But she’s undeterred by the heat, the noise, the dirt, and by the fact, which is at the heart of the film, that she’s only a pregnant woman.

This emphasis is not my opinion; instead it is a point made repeatedly in the film. No one is worried about a pregnant woman. I mean there are secrets to be hidden or discovered, and there might be conspiracies working against her, but Kolkata is a male dominated society. Men deal with her, often with a twinkle in their eye, as if to say to their fellows, “watch how I handle her”. Of course there are always fellows around. Privacy is hard to come by in a crowded city.

But Vidya Bagchi persists. She shows a picture of herself and her husband on their wedding to the hotel manager. This man did not stay at this hotel. Well then, let me see your records. Are these your records? Nothing is computerized. Madam, computers are at five-star hotels. We are a zero star hotel.

Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai

First, borrow a title stem, ignoring that it’s been used many, many times, then localize it to your own neck of the woods. That’s what Director Milan Luthria and screenwriter Rajat Arora did. But they weren’t done with just that. They added a few pinches from Scarface. and a bit of subtle flavorings from The Godfather minus the grand flourishes and operatic touches. They gently simmered this masala and with an occasional stir, they let it cook for two hours and 14 minutes, and then, their recipe called for it to be served up piping hot. This dish is – Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai.

A July 30th, 2010 release from India, it is now available on DVD, or you can rent it via Netflix. This is the simple and often told tale about how a criminal rises from poverty, including the loss of his entire family in a flood, to the top of the heap in crime – in [name your own city]. In this case it is the metropolis once known as Bombay.

It is just after the Indian independence in the late 1940′s. We meet an orphaned boy – those nasty floods in Madras wiped out his home and family, and somehow he washed up on the docks of Bombay.

Working for 25 cents a day, he somehow rights himself. He’s nameless until a homeless woman calls him Sultan in return for a charitable gift from him. Twenty five years later, he has risen in the Bombay underworld to a position of prominence.

His byword is “When friendship is available, why choose enmity?” He is now called Sultan Mirza and he has just brokered the peace among the top criminal families just as Don Corleone attempted in The Godfather.

Mirza divided the city into four quadrants to keep the four families happy, and to avoid bloodshed over control of the turf – which he said was “just making the police’s job easier”. He retained the control of Bombay’s waterfront and sea-lanes for himself.

Ajay Devgn as Sultan Mirza

Played by Ajay Devgn, Mirza is smart, fearless, and above everything else, he’s charismatic. Dressed always in white in the typical ‘leisure suit style’ from the seventies, he cut a dashing figure. He set his sights on a Bollywood movie queen, and won her love.