Heaven on Earth - Preity Zinta at her best
{FILM DIARY}
Heaven on Earth (Canada, 2008)
Seen: Monday, 22nd March 2010 (cinema, BollywoodFestiwal.pl)
Runtime: 106′
Director: Deepa Mehta
Cast: Preity Zinta
Plot: (from imdb)
Chand, a young Punjabi woman, travels to Canada to marry a man she has never met. They live in a crowded suburban house and Chand has to also put up with her husband’s abusive behavior.
Trailer
Rating: -1 (Disliked It)
Impressions In Short
Preity Zinta is absolutely amazing, no wonder she won so many awards and critical acclaim for this. But the film lost me the moment they brought in the Jamaican superstition bit (which was relatively early on).
More About the Film
The film starts off very realistically and I liked that. The way the relationships between people are portrayed and the way the whole situation was sketched - it was very real and had a lot of detail. But soon after the abuse starts and Chand talks to her Jamaican friend at the factory… that’s when it goes all wrong. The Jamaican woman gives her a root that she says will make the husband fall in love with Chand. Chand fails to feed the root to her husband though and throws it into the garden. The root turns into a snake and the snake turns into a duplicate of her husband and the film goes crazy and quite pretentious.
If not for the whole supernatural subplot, I probably would have enjoyed this film very much. The realistic bits are done very well and Preity Zinta put in a fantastic performance - I’ve never seen her this good before :)
Recommended?
It’s worth seeing for Preity Zinta, definitely. Otherwise… I’m not so sure.
