An eminently watchable movie based on a mediocre novel.
reviewed by Paramjit Rai
Talking to Rehan Ansari in these pages some months back, filmmaker Deepa Mehta noted that making films has become a "hybrid" process, and her latest offering, Earth, clearly is one. Based on a book by a Pakistani author, with Indian actors, filmed in Delhi, and funded by a Canadian film company, the film is patently international. And given that the making of the film was such, the audience targeted also seems to be equally hybrid — those wanting a serious film, yet familiar with Bollywood's musical bonanzas.
Earth is an adaptation of Bapsi Sidhwa's novel Cracking India. Mehta re-wrote the dialogue and adapted from the original English into Punjabi, Urdu, and Gujarati. And it is to her credit that she has rendered an eminently watchable film from a passably written book.