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| OPENING NIGHT CELEBRATIONS: Heaven on Earth |
| DIRECTOR'S NOTES |
On the Genesis of the film...
In 1989 I saw Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry’s version of Naga Mandala, a play written
by India’s acclaimed writer, actor and filmmaker, Girish Karnad. The play itself was
based on an old Indian folk tale about a lonely and unhappy wife who finds comfort when
she is visited by a snake who has taken on the form of her husband.
Then four years ago, at a reception in Edmonton, I met Mona Gill, a young Punjabi
woman. We got to talking and she proceeded to tell me her story and what brought her to
Canada from Punjab, India. Her arranged marriage to a Sikh man soon disintegrated into
an abusive relationship which was exacerbated by the presence of her mother-in-law and
sister-in-law in the joint family. It was only after the birth of her daughter that she got the
courage to leave her abusive husband. Her mind-numbing story was about isolation and
an emotional and physical hell. It ended in triumph for her when she walked out and
turned her back, not only on the marriage, but also to years of a patriarchal and cultural
structure in which she and thousands of women like her grew up in. She had the courage
to break the code of silence. A silence that is a mandatory requirement as far as marriage
in South Asian culture is concerned.
In talking about this she ran a serious risk of bringing a great deal of shame upon herself,
her family and her husband. To wash one’s dirty linen in public’ is an anathema to many
such women. Realizing what a great role model Mona is, The National Film Board of
Canada has just finished a documentary on her.
Ironically, Mona’s story wasn’t unique. Hundreds of women from the South Asian
community shared pretty much the same narrative..9
A year later I was asked by Noemi Weis to direct Lets Talk About It a documentary about
children growing up in abusive households within the immigrant community. Along with
a Nigerian and Ecuadorian woman, I wanted to include Mona. Sadly, our budget did not
allow for a shoot in Edmonton. However, we did meet another Punjabi woman,
Amandeep, whose story was not dissimilar to Mona’s. Both Mona and Amandeep
became a source of inspiration for me.
Around this time, I saw Naga Mandala again in New Delhi. To weave both a personal
story of a young immigrant woman and the myth of the Cobra, the nature of duality,
seemed like an interesting combination. The script, which follows Chand’s journey, took
about a year to write. The whole process from script to final cut took 18 months.
Naga Mandala is a story that is fluid enough to disturb stable representations. It is the
story of an unhappy bride, who fills her loneliness by conjuring fantasies, dreams and
illusions to give meaning to her life. Stories which then get a life of their own, and start
functioning independently from her.
The story about a snake becoming her lover, after drinking the magic potion can be
perceived on many levels. There is the literal narrative - a snake assuming the role of her
husband. And on a completely different register, the transformation of the husband into
the snake assumes a philosophical tenor. Does the Naga (snake) lover really exist or is he
a figment of her imagination? Or is it the husband playing a game of his own? Or is it the
wife who creates her story?
Karnad explores the meaning of creativity by presenting a complex and provocatively
ambiguous world where fictional characters and real characters intermingle and the lines
between the visible and the invisible are blurred. What makes his work fascinating is that
even though it is set in the traditional/folk format, it examines issues that are
contemporary.
The character of the husband is split into two. In his human form, he is the coarse and
boorish man, who brutalizes his wife Rani during the day, but at night he metamorphoses
into a divine lover a Naga-Raja. Both halves are unaware of each other, both exist in
one another, both are each other’s divided selves, contradicting and contrasting with each
other in a dynamic play of fantasy and illusion. The real merges with the fictive, and the
imagined dissolves with the material. This duality is played out within all the characters
of this play. Rani, the wife, is an active participant in this game of the ephemeral,
building it like a house of cards, pushing it inch by inch. She needs the vertiginous thrill
of the transitory to be truly creative and alive. She is not alone in this game, each
character plays it out within their own cycle of pain and joy, adding layer upon layer,
knitting together a complex cosmos where half truths hover tantalizingly over
the quotidian, conscious world. In the play, the Rosa character is a blind woman, who
takes pity on Rani and asks her son to bring her a magic root.
The story is grounded in reality, with its daily chores of washing and cooking. But within
that world the characters take flight, inhabiting a fluid and magical world, where anything.10
can happen. A snake can manifest itself as a character, a snake can assume a human form,
and a woman writes her own story by the power of her imagination. That combination
and interplay between the fantastic and the ordinary was something I wanted to explore in
the film.
On working with the actors...
Preity Zinta, who plays Chand, is a huge star in Bollywood. In most of her films she
plays the ‘uber-cool chick’. I met her last year in England and her translucency as a
person really struck a chord in me. I cast instinctively. I knew within the span of ten
minutes that Preity would make the perfect Chand. Preity is smart, honest, adventurous,
and has no attitude considering her marquee status. Luckily, Preity was at a point in her
career where she wanted to experiment, do something other than Bollywood.
To work with Preity was an absolute joy. She is a consummate professional and
extremely diligent. She has an academic background in psychology, so she wrote
copious notes and had a barrage of questions regarding her character and motivation. To
play Chand was all consuming for Preity. She became Chand and worked her bones off
to give her role authenticity, and this included learning Punjabi.
Maji’s character, played with such conviction by Balinder Johal, was typical of the victim
becoming the victimizer, the woman taking on the role of the abusive patriarchy.
Balinder proved her mettle professionally and physically during the shooting of the film.
We did seven takes of the shot where Balinder is pushed to the kitchen floor by Preity. It
was only after I had OK’d the final shot that Balinder admitted that her wrists were
weak. She came into her own when she would do improvisation. She improvised all the
dialogues between her and Papaji in the scenes shot in the mall. When Papaji was doing
his exercise on the escalator she burst into an impromptu song, taking me by surprise!
Sadly, it didn’t make the final cut.
I first met Vansh Bhardwaj who plays Rocky, at a performance of Naga Mandala. It was
Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry’s version and the talent and focus Vansh brought to the role
were tangible. After the play was over I went to meet him backstage and found the
awesome lead with a broom in his hand helping to clean up the set! Heaven On Earth is
Vansh’s first film and to this day his charisma blows me away. My only concern was
Vansh performing with Preity. Would he be diffident to her star status? As it turns out, I
had nothing to worry about. The discipline that Vansh had imbibed working with
Neelam held him in good stead and Preity was extremely generous in sharing the ’film
language’ she had garnered over the years with Vansh.
Rajinder Singh Cheema from Vancouver played the kind but ineffectual patriarch of the
household. He brought incredible dignity to the role and I think surprised even himself
with his stamina and single mindedness in not giving up until he got a line or a body
movement just right. He continues to call me &bhenji (sister, in Punjabi) even though I
was a hard taskmaster..11
Gourrav Sihan was a discovery! I was going nuts trying to find a Baldev-- the son-in-law
who is dependent on his wife’s family and not having much luck. If somebody looked
the part, they didn’t know Punjabi, and if they knew Punjabi and looked the part they had
no propensity towards the craft of performance. Then along came an audition with
Gourrav. He was perfect. The beaten son-in-law who tries to put up a brave face and
keep his dignity intact without rocking the boat. There are these ‘quick looks‘ that
Gourrav gives to people, looks that take in the situation at hand and then ignore it.
Ramanjit Kaur plays Aman, Baldev's wife, Rocky's sister, Chand's sister-in-law, Maji and
Papaji’s daughter and the mother to Kabir and Loveleen. A woman defined through her
relationships rather than her own identity. I have known Raman for years. She did a
cameo for Fire and is an extremely well respected theatre actor. She continues to play
the lead in all of Neelam’s plays. To work with her was effortless. She too brought the
discipline of theatre with her and an uncanny ability to have fun. A storehouse of Punjabi
songs for ALL occasions, she came up with the folk songs sung in the film.
I had worked with Orville Maciel in the radio play Funny Boy and was very impressed by
him. So when it came to cast Kabir, he was a shoe-in! Kabir is an angry 13 year old who
has some of the darkest lines in the film. He perhaps is the only one in the family who is
truly "Canadian," much to the confusion and bewilderment of the rest of the family.
I love to talk about Geetika Sharma, my lovely Loveleen, the classic victim in-the-
making. Geetika brightened each working day for me. This was her first film and she is
an absolute natural--very talented, hard working and such a joy to be around. Geetika is
the only person I know who can cry on demand! We had our own language going “Don’t
be filmy Geetika, Just... ’FEEL,’ she would pipe in, finishing my sentence! Her mother
Mamta brought us the most delicious home made parathas to set.
On cultural authenticity and the larger social context...
The family in Brampton represents a typical working class immigrant family in Canada.
They could be from any community. The reason I focused on a Punjabi family was, to a
large extent, because I am a Punjabi and grew up in Amritsar, speaking the language. It
is easier to be authentic if you belong to the milieu and are familiar with it. The fact that
Neelam’s play was in Punjabi had a lot to do with it as well. And finally the women I
met, read about, all belonged to this community. All of them gave generously of their
experience, of their stories. Thanks to our researcher and friend, Nep Siddhu, I met
families in the suburbs of Toronto who I could draw upon to do the film. Characters, the.12
rituals, every small detail of the film are rooted in reality. The reality of dislocation; the
effect that immigration has on people who leave their native land to come to Canada in
search of monetary security and instead find themselves living in the fringes, trying
desperately to simulate elements of their homeland in isolation from the mainstream. Heaven On Earth has three distinct themes. Immigration, isolation, and the power of the
imagination that finally enables Chand to escape her grim reality. Most of us like to
believe that migration to Canada improves women’s status, but this isn’t necessarily so.
Though it might help some women escape from oppression in their homeland,
unfortunately it also deprives them of protection that their families offer back home. In
India, abusive behaviour might be checked by family members, friends or neighbors. But
in their adopted homeland these women are bereft of family and friends. And in many
cases, totally isolated and therefore vulnerable. Everybody in Heaven On Earth is a
victim. Not only of the cultural baggage which they brought with them to their new
home, but also because of the lack of support they find when they get here. There is little
or no network that prepares these characters for an alien world, which they can navigate
with dignity.
On the look of the film...
The family in Brampton is a microcosm of a much larger reality. I wanted to be a fly on
the wall observing their intimate drama unfold. In order to do this we decided we needed
mobility to follow the characters and not be tied down to technical baggage. It seemed
imminently sensible to shoot the film handheld and in 16mm. Both Giles and myself
decided that not only would 16mm give it the grainy look that I wanted, but also free us
from huge lighting setups, which would have inhibited the actors tremendously.
The ’look’ of the film is dictated to me by the script and the characters. This is the fifth
film that Giles and myself have worked on together. Giles has an incredible
understanding of script and knows that a camera movement should be dictated by the
actors and not the other way around.
Authenticity of course was also paramount for this film. Days of hanging around
families similar to the ones in the film, helped tremendously. Dilip, our Production
Designer, has an uncanny eye for detail. His challenge was to recreate a house in
Brampton that even ’smelled’ real.
Making Heaven On Earth gave me an opportunity not only to explore subjects that I care
about passionately, that is, isolation, immigration and imagination, but the film also gave
me an opportunity to go into territories technically that I have never grappled with before.
The story dictated its own style. I went minimal.
The use of black and white was a choice that Giles and I made fairly early in the creative
process. We decided to shoot a few portions in black and white to emphasize the main
theme of the film: dislocation and isolation. I felt that the ’twilight zone’ quality of these
moments needed to be highlighted and using black and white seemed the most organic.13
way of doing it. It wasn’t as simple as ’intensity is leached of all colour, so let’s go to
black and white’. Rather, it was to try and encourage the viewer to see the characters lay
bare their most intimate fears and delusions in monochromatic austerity. The first use of
black and white in the film is at Niagara Falls and is a bit startling. However, it delivers a
profound sense of isolation and a disconnect between our idea of something (the
romanticism of Niagara Falls) and the reality of our circumstances at the moment.
There is something fascinating, as well as uncomfortable, when we see the characters in
this visual context; a bit like witnessing the aftermath of an accident. We can’t take our
eyes off the victims and yet feel terribly guilty about watching them. In order not to feel
like a voyeur there is a tendency to distance ourselves from what we are seeing. In Heaven On Earth the device we use to achieve this ’distance’, this ’objectivity’ is black
and white. The fractured intimate moments of Chand and Rocky’s lives are like seeing an
x-ray of a broken bone or tumor. Stark, ominous and yet compelling.
In terms of locations, we shot mostly in Brampton, but also in Niagara Falls, Toronto, the
Gardiner Expressway and Punjab, India.
On the Physical Violence...
The focus of Heaven On Earth is not physical abuse per se, rather, I wanted to explore
the different aspects that might lead to it. In this particular case dislocation and the
emotional stress and isolation that this brings with it, and finally, Chand’s imagination
which is a tool that can counter it. So the ‘abuse’ scenes are very few in the film. What
was tough was to sustain that tension throughout. It was almost like shooting a thriller -
as in what’s going to happen next?
Vansh was pretty cerebral in his approach to these scenes, while Preity was entirely
emotional. There were days, she said, when she couldn’t sleep.
On some of the production challenges...
We shot for 30 days and it was so cold! Minus 20 degrees. That’s what I remember
vividly, shivering throughout the shoot. Especially the last scene of the film which we
shot over three days because the weather fluctuated between those deadly clear days of
winter and unexpected blizzards. A real challenge.
Preity was a real trooper considering she comes from balmy Mumbai. The rest of the
cast from Vancouver, Toronto and India also met the winter head-on. Especially the
kids.
On the role of the filmmaker...
Making films is like going on an exploration for me. To explore and to try and unravel a
set of circumstances, to examine the psychology behind them is what I find fascinating.
Finally, it’s about telling a story about a subject I care about passionately. Where does.14
this desire come from? Perhaps the politics and policies that define all our lives. We are
all susceptible to the dictates of culture, religion and economics. How we negotiate with
all the above is what I find compelling. My community has evolved over the last century
in Canada from one that was eschewed and expelled to one that is found a way within the
mainstream. There are many role models of success in business, politics and the arts that
reflect this. However, for many new immigrants searching out this same pathway, the
initial transition can be grueling. The strong social and cultural bonds which are the
strengths of our community, ironically, is what sometimes causes us to mask problems in
order to project a flawless image.
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