Earth (1998)

An ambitious film, Earth wants to dramatize a forbidden love affair set in turbulent political times and see the events through the eyes of a young girl. It succeeds well enough, though the plot occasionally becomes mechanistic, allowing all of the major religious and ethnic groups involved with the partition of India (creating the separate country of Pakistan as India was becoming independent) to express their own views. Lenny, the crippled little girl, watches Shantya, her nanny, fall in love with Hasan the masseur, a man she likes well enough, but her preference for the Ice Candy Man, proves to be the couple's undoing. Nandita Das is supple as the nanny, and Rahul Khanna is stalwart as the masseur, but it's Aamir Khan (best known to Western audiences as the lead in Lagaan) who's the real fulcrum of the film. His frustrations in love poison his soul, allowing him to join the mobs of rampaging Muslims who sought out Hindus for persecution and worse. Lenny follows her naïvely neutral father's lead ("We must all think Swiss"), but her ignorance is at least excusable. Writer/director Deepa Mehta must be applauded for trying to capture a complex time in her country's history, and Westerners with little concept of how violent a birth modern India and Pakistan endured should see Earth. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide