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Derek Malcolm's rating
Partition crosses the divide
By
Derek Malcolm
11 Sep 2008
Vic Sarin, the director of this film about the love between a Sikh (Jimi Mistry) and a Muslim (Kristin Kreuk) during the bloodbath that followed the Partition of 1947, is a veteran cinematographer. So his often moving film is good to look at despite being mostly shot in British Columbia. It is also well-acted, with Irfan Khan particularly good as the Sikh’s doubting friend.
What it lacks is the passion and scope of MS Sathyu’s classic Garam Hawa or the intellectual rigour of Ken McMullen’s Partition. It is, however, far less rubbishy than the Bollywood epic which took up roughly the same story and was a triumph at the Indian box-office.
The film relates the awful nature of religious bigotry with some telling sequences but doesn’t say much about the political mistake which Gandhi in the end so regretted. It is, however, watchable throughout as a document about the individual human tragedies that the advent of Partition threw up.
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