REVIEW: Deepa Mehta's Videsh
With films like Fire, Earth and Water to her credit, the least one expects from a Deepa Mehta film is a gripping and striking storyline. And the director does not disappoint us in this respect with her latest offering Videsh (English: Heaven On Earth). The story is more than simply striking. It's jolting and its 'different' to say the least. But not perhaps in the way we expected.
Going for a film like Videsh, one might have quite a few pre-conceived notions. One might think that it's similar to Jag Mundhra's Aishwarya Rai starrer Provoked. One may also think (and rightfully so) that the movie is woman centric, oppression related like Mehta's Fire or Water. But let me warn you, it's more than just that!
In Videsh, Mehta in an attempt to fuse the real with the surreal world, dishes out something that borders on being real shocking. Personally, I did not expect this from a Deepa Mehta film.
So what's Videsh really about?
The film is about a small town girl Chand (played by Preity Zinta) who is sent to Canada by her family so that she could get married to a cab driver Rocky - this being a common phenomena in the smaller towns of Punjab.
What awaits her is a typical immigrant Punjabi family complete with a father-in-law, mother-in-law, a sister-in-law, the sister-in-law's husband who has been sponsored by her husband-to-be but has so far found no job in the strange land and of course the sister-in-laws two kids. And there's more…
After getting married in a Canadian Gurudwara, Chand gets sucked into the everyday problems of the family. The husband who is burdened with the responsibility of having to get his entire family (the ones in Canada and the ones who he still has to import from) settled, offers no help to the girl who's trying to adjust to her new surroundings. In fact, his anger now finds a new outlet – the wife!!
