I like the way things look. The town of Lahore (or its stand-in), is not just gorgeous, but gorgeous in the right way: it isn't shot so as to look exotic, and we're not overwhelmed by scenery or architecture. It's beautiful in the way home is beautiful.
And Shanta (Nandita Das), also looks gorgeous - sexy in a way that eludes Hollywood actresses. The sex scene is not, in terms of the emotions of its participants, intense, and it's distinctly PG-rated; it's also convincing.
No doubt it's hard to make a film that is really and truly, at its core, ABOUT the partition of India (unless, of course, you throw in the towel and simply make a documentary). The only way to do so would be to concentrate on people whose lives are thoroughly political - politicians or professional agitators, or ground-level people who happen to have no concerns other than nationalistic ones. Mehta hasn't done this. All her characters have private lives - which means that there's always the danger that, however much effect the national tragedy has on these private lives, it will in the end come out as no more than an irrelevant distraction, like a toothache during a love affair, or the bombing in the recent "Pearl Harbor". This isn't the case here: private lives and national tragedy connect in an unforced and illuminating way.
A compatriot of mine complains that we're never told why Shanta chooses Hassan over Navaz. (He suggests it's because Hassan is the better looking, which clearly CAN'T be the reason, because, unless your sexual preferences tend towards men, and I suspect in some cases even if they do, we can only infer that Hassan IS more attractive from the fact that Shanta chooses him. It's not as if the other one has a hump.) In fact we're given ample reason for the choice: she loves one man and not the other. What more reason do you need?
Her feelings in any direction are at first so slight that they need no explanation. They amplify because they're subject to the same unchecked positive feedback loops that govern interactions between individual characters and between the various religious groups as a whole. Shanta is just ever so wary of Navaz, because he is just ever so slightly pursuing her; this wariness makes him pursue more which in turn makes her more suspicious, and so on. All hatreds and loves develop, by and large, in the same way. Most of the time there's something to check the process before we're carried very far by it; in times of uncertainty like this, there isn't.
And Shanta (Nandita Das), also looks gorgeous - sexy in a way that eludes Hollywood actresses. The sex scene is not, in terms of the emotions of its participants, intense, and it's distinctly PG-rated; it's also convincing.
No doubt it's hard to make a film that is really and truly, at its core, ABOUT the partition of India (unless, of course, you throw in the towel and simply make a documentary). The only way to do so would be to concentrate on people whose lives are thoroughly political - politicians or professional agitators, or ground-level people who happen to have no concerns other than nationalistic ones. Mehta hasn't done this. All her characters have private lives - which means that there's always the danger that, however much effect the national tragedy has on these private lives, it will in the end come out as no more than an irrelevant distraction, like a toothache during a love affair, or the bombing in the recent "Pearl Harbor". This isn't the case here: private lives and national tragedy connect in an unforced and illuminating way.
A compatriot of mine complains that we're never told why Shanta chooses Hassan over Navaz. (He suggests it's because Hassan is the better looking, which clearly CAN'T be the reason, because, unless your sexual preferences tend towards men, and I suspect in some cases even if they do, we can only infer that Hassan IS more attractive from the fact that Shanta chooses him. It's not as if the other one has a hump.) In fact we're given ample reason for the choice: she loves one man and not the other. What more reason do you need?
Her feelings in any direction are at first so slight that they need no explanation. They amplify because they're subject to the same unchecked positive feedback loops that govern interactions between individual characters and between the various religious groups as a whole. Shanta is just ever so wary of Navaz, because he is just ever so slightly pursuing her; this wariness makes him pursue more which in turn makes her more suspicious, and so on. All hatreds and loves develop, by and large, in the same way. Most of the time there's something to check the process before we're carried very far by it; in times of uncertainty like this, there isn't.