Earth - Indeed Unforgettable

Who among the reviewers did you agree more with, and why?

After viewing the film Earth, I find myself agreeing with Zarminae Ansari rather than C.J.S. Wallia in their reviews of this superior film. Wallia seems to be demanding documentary-style accuracy in this movie, calling it simplistic in its treatment and distorting in its view of the complexity of the Indian partition. However, Ansari does not avoid this complexity in her analysis of the film; rather, she notes that "the movie will undoubtedly offend both sides, since it spares neither, nor holds one as morally superior to the other." Wallia's perspective seems biased and offputting at the very beginning, when he introduces this review by noting that Mehta's previous film (the first in a trilogy) was "severely criticized for presenting a distorted view of Hindu culture." Ansara doesn't duck making a statement about the contoversy, but introduces this film more as something intriguing to be seen, rather than something to be prejudged in the light of its predecessor.

I agree with Ansari that Lenny is the best narrator--a Parsi child not subjected to family prejudices who thus would tend to see things without the coatings of understanding and misunderstanding that an adult of a certain culture or religion might bring to a point of view. She is not a "simplistic" character; she is a simple person. By being with her as she sees what's going on around her, we can see Ansari's view that this film is "a romance, a tragedy, a history, and a comment on the human heart: its tenderness and the beast that hides within." While the history behind the story might be vastly complex, the aim of this film is not to dramatize that complexity but rather the complexity of the lives of the people as this history overtakes them. As Ansari says, the child's confusion embodies the confusion of the millions who are eventually affected by it. We can see from there the enormity of the consequences of the partition.

Wallia's scathing review makes the film seem like a failure ("simplistic," "[Lenny's] viewpoint too limiting for the subject," "the characters are poorly developed," "the roles of the [factions] are oversimplified...distorted," and the film "viciously distorts the...role of the Sikhs in the...struggle") I can't see any of that, and would argue that this is a story told to tell a greater story, and in that it succeeds--and succeeds unforgettably, as Ansari would say.