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Heaven on Earth

November 16 at 4:15 & 7, November 17 at 7 in Owen Sound
November 19 at 6:45 in Port Elgin

Deepa Mehta is one of Canada’s most distinguished contemporary film-makers.  With her dual focus on highlighting this country’s diverse multi-cultural make-up and the portrayal of strong women characters, she has been unwavering in giving socio-historical and political context to her remarkable cinema, most notably in her famed trilogy of films - Fire, Earth and the multiple-award-winning Water, a Film Circuit favourite.  With films like Bollywood/Hollywood and The Republic of Love, she has also demonstrated her astute flair for the more whimsical sides of storytelling.  At heart, Mehta’s films are ones with a conscience and a heart; she brings her wealth of experience and filmmaking savvy to her newest film, Heaven on Earth.

Like Water, Heaven on Earth is first and foremost a study of a female character who must cope with very difficult circumstances.  The protagonist, a young Indian woman (Bollyood superstar Preity Zinta), is involved in an arranged marriage with an Indo-Canadian who, as it turns out, is highly abusive.  Her situation is wretched, but she is largely powerless to improve it.  New to Canada and at the mercy of her husband, she quite literally has nowhere to go - except into the recesses of her thriving imagination.   As the film unfolds and her situate becomes more gruesome, the parallel world of her own construction starts taking over as her fantasy universe becomes a far more viable place to inhabit than her real environment.

Films like the recent Pan’s Labyrinth have fully mined the emotional and dramatic potential of revealing harsh realities by juxtaposing them with heart-wrenching flights of fancy designed as survival mechanisms for the innocent and victimized.  Mehta adds a new level of profound and sad complexity to her body of work by making the harrowing and prescient suggestion that the interior world of fantasy might be, for some people, the only possible form of redemption.

 

Director:  Deepa Mehta

 

Cast:  Preity Zinta, Rajinder Singh Cheema, David C. Malcolm

 

Run time:  106 minutes

 

Country:  Canada

 

Year:  2008

 

Language:  Punjabi with English subtitles

 

Rating: 14A