Deepa Mehta is an Indo-Canadian filmmaker and screenwriter. She is famous for her trilogy work about Indian society: Earth (1998), Water (2005), and Fire (1996). She was awarded the Genie Award in 2003 for the screenplay and the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for lifetime artistic achievement in 2012. Her movies are known for their profound scenes, best music, and appalling side of society. Equally, her films have been boycotted for hurting the sentiments of some sections of society.
Earth is different from Deepa Mehta's other films, based on the India-Pakistan partition mainly, under which the British left a politically fraught India. In history books, we read about Indian independence in a glorified way with the speech of Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, movie "Earth" opened the public's eyes towards another aspect of reality and the harsh truth of the division. It was the suffering of millions of common people, unquestionably a nightmare for humankind.
The movie starts with a ten-year-old Lenny living in a wealthy Parsi family in 1945, Lahore. They have some servants belonging to different religions. Young Shanta (the maid) and her friends are concerned about their community. They are close to each other, but as the division of India is declared, violence arises rapidly. It changes circumstances in the city. Lenny's father, Mr. Rustom, brings a gun home to keep his family safe. Sher Singh had to hide from his Muslim friends Dil Nawaz and the butcher. After his sisters' murder in Gurdaspur train came from India, Dil Nawaz started hating Hindus, considering them the killers. In all the distress, There is a love triangle between Shanta, Hassan, and Dil Nawaz. When Shanta doesn't accept Dil Nawaz's proposal, It makes him more weak and jealous. The movie ends with Hassan's murder by some religious elements and Shanta's capture for revenge by a group of people, who were supported by Dil Nawaz.
In a certain way, it is a great movie. It shows the concrete side of human behavior and the agony of society in the name of religion. In an epic dialogue, Dil Nawaz says to Shanta; "there is an animal inside all of us, like the lion in the zoo, he just lies there, waiting for the cage to open, and when it dies, God help us!" The film suggests when religious values become higher than human values, humanity always suffers. Hate, jealousy, anger, and inhuman cruelty spread.
