Vi segnalo l'articolo Deepa Mehta’s ‘Earth’ is a reminder of lines arbitrarily drawn between countries and hearts, di Nandini Ramnath, pubblicato oggi da Scroll:
'Earth was inspired by [Deepa] Mehta’s own family history. “It was going to be loosely based on my parents’ experience as they ‘celebrated’ the Independence of India, which for them was always intertwined with the tragedy of its Partition. (...) They lived in Amritsar and Lahore was their second home.” Mehta had been moved by M.S. Sathyu’s Garm Hava (1973), about the dilemma that confronts a Muslim family that chooses India over Pakistan, and Vittorio De Sica’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970), about a Jewish family in Fascist-era Italy in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Sometime in 1997, Mehta saw a copy of [Bapsi] Sidhwa’s Ice Candy Man (which is also titled Cracking India) in a bookstore. A quote by Sidhwa on the cover caught Mehta’s eye: “All wars are fought on women’s bodies.” “What could be more cinematic than those words?” Mehta said. (...)
One of the film’s most layered performances is by Aamir Khan. His Dil Navaz embodies the erasure of the boundary between religious feelings and political beliefs that marks accounts of Partition survivors. In a standout scene, Dil Navaz watches helplessly from a terrace as Lahore burns, his rage pickling into a hatred that frightens Shanta [protagonista femminile]. “David Hamilton and Jhamu Sughand were the two producers on the film,” Mehta said. “Jhamu gave Aamir the script. Aamir read it, liked it, we met, talked and that was it. I think he liked the challenge of Dil Navaz’s character arc - the ability of hatred to askew love and decency. It’s one of his most complex performances.” (...)
Partition-era Lahore was recreated in Delhi. “We went to Lahore for a recce but the logistics of shooting there were enormous,” Mehta said. (...) Earth was distributed by Jhamu Sughand. It had a limited run, and circulated more widely on pirated videos, Mehta recalled. To date, the film isn’t available on any streaming platform in India'.
