EARTH, FIRE AND WATER

EARTH
FIRE

WATER

So what are they? 3 of the 4 elements? Where is air? Well that is a very good question...but I am not really talking about the elements as such...I am talking about Deepa Mehta's films. I heard they are the most beautiful films ever...so I went a did a little research...

So who is Deepa Mehta?
It appears, she has become the voice of a new India, but India has a difficult time accepting what she has to say. Due to her bi-cultural roots (she was born in Amritsar in 1950 and moved to Canada in the early seventies) she has become one of India's most controversial and taboo-breaking filmakers. It is said that women salute her and that men often dispise her. It is reported that a man shouted "I am going to shoot you, Madam" in 1996 after the première screening of the movie "Fire" the first movie to explore female homosexuality in modern/contemporary India.

In 1998 Earth came out. Ms. Mehta showed religious intolerance and violence that erupted among Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus during the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. The movie was better accepted by the Indian community, in large part because it was set in the past and because it investigated the effects of colonialism.

Fire is a tale of two vital, beautiful women breaking their cultural obstacles and being reborn through the passion they express for each other. Their relationship is forbidden, but it is by giving into. It is supposed to show the struggle between tradition and new ideas.

But Water, the final film in Ms Mehta's trilogy on the elements, sparked controversy even before filming started. The shooting was supposed to take place in the holy city of Varanasi in 2000, because the "widow houses" still exist there but violence from local political parties and Hindu extremists forced Ms Mehta to retreat. Shooting resumed only years later in Sri Lanka. Even there, the movie had to be shot under a false working title. The story is told through the eyes of a six (6!!!) year old widow. It tells the story of Indian women who are labeled as worthless because their husbands have disappeared. Forced to live in a house of confinement, they often turn to prostitution to survive.

It appears that in Earth, Ms Mehta's explored the taboo of religious extremism, in Fire, she explored the taboo of female homosexuality then in Water attacks the taboo of social humiliation of women.

Does that mean that Ms Mehta’s movies will make a difference in todays society?

In the meantime I would love watching these films...Mim, thank you so much for telling me all about them. I got so curious that I decided to conduct this "little research project" and post it on my blog.

Have any of you seen any of them? If so I would love to hear your comments about them.

I am trying to find a DVD of the first two and cannot wait for Water to come out on the big screen here in Luxembourg!