Deepa Mehta’s Heaven On Earth about an NRI bride from Punjab in Canada who becomes a victim of serious domestic abuse, was originally offered to Gul Panag.
Then Deepa met Zinta.
“And I thought Preity was perfect!” says Deepa . “I first met Preity at the IIFA. I was stuck by her positivity and her hungering for opportunities to stretch herself as an actress. We talked about the real-life character of a Punjabi housewife who goes through the nightmare of domestic violence. Preity was keen. But the dates were a problem. To understand and come to grips with the character’s milieu and body language. I think Preity can look very very Punjabi.”
Mehta was nonchalant about the language. “Punjabi is as Indian as Hindi or English. I think audiences all over the world would read the Punjabi characters in Heaven On Earth without prejudice, just as Priyadarshan’s Kanjeevaram was appreciated in the Tamil language.”
Set in the Toronto suburb of Brampton, Heaven On Earth is the story of a Ludhiana girl, Chand (Preity), who moves in after marrying Rocky Grewal (Vansh Bhardwaj) only to find herself locked in a loveless marriage, and a life of beatings and torture by her husband and in-laws. Chand’s journey into hell begins the moment the naive girl lands in Canada, which is considered heaven in Punjab.
Deepa remembers when she first showed Heaven On Earth (entitled Videsh in India) “Everyone just sat in their seats when the film ended. I thought, ‘Oh oh, this one is a dud’. But when we got a ten-minute standing ovation, I understood the 18,000-strong audience didn’t move because they were so moved. I think Heaven On Earth connected with an international audience even better than my previous Water, which was short-listed for an Oscar, for the simple reason that domestic violence has more universal resonance than the plight of widows.”
Heaven On Earth is a hardhitting film in more ways than one.When the first slap comes, it hits the audience hard across the face. Spousal abuse as a theme is not new to cinema. What sets Deepa Mehta’s Heaven On Earth apart from other films including Jagmohan Mundhra’s Provoked is the fusion of unspoken unexpressed terror with mythological elements all packed with sardine-like compactness into a small apartment in Ontario, Canada, where Chand arrives fearful and hopeful after her wedding.
The tightly-wound tale of the tormented wife is never allowed to have loose moments. Ironically, outwardly we see a warm home filled with a Sikh family half of whom seem to have absolutely nothing to do. Within their abject nullity lies the secret to the violence that claims, possesses and tries to smother Chand’s domestic dreams. We know from the start that she’ll escape the nightmare of a brutal marriage. That she lives to tell her tale is self-evident. Thoroughly deglamorized and devastated by destiny’s cruel blows, Preity plays Chand with dignity and depth that take us by surprise. She and director Deepa Mehta keep the hysteria completely in check. The drama is generated completely from the normal domesticated sounds and sights.The film creates the growing claustrophobia of Chand’s marital domesticity with acute austerity. The spurts of on-screen violence are all the more shocking for the way they erupt within the workaday milieu.
