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Oh! You Preity Thing | Preity Zinda resorts to mystical solutions to her troubled marriage in Heaven on Earth.

HEAVEN ON EARTH
Directed by Deepa Mehta. Starring Preity Zinta, Vansh Bhardwaj, Ramanjit Kaur, Balinder Johal. Opens Fri, Nov 14.
**1/2

The most straightforward way I think of to describe Heaven on Earth is to say that it’s difficult. It’s a hard film to watch — not just because of its mission to question the validity of a vicious patriarchy in an arranged marriage, but also its desire to blend reality and myth to the point where the two become indistinguishable.

Writer/director Deepa Mehta has never shied away from distressing subject matter; her previous films (most recently the Oscar-nominated Water, about Hindu “child brides”) have controversially depicted different aspects of Indian culture, so perhaps some audiences will find her latest release upsetting simply because once again Mehta dares to suggest that some traditions are wrong.

But Heaven on Earth goes to some extreme lengths to prove this fairly basic point. The film begins in India, where Chand (Preity Zinta) is briefly shown to be enjoying her life at home with her parents before being flown to Toronto to marry into a family of strangers. She is understandably timid upon meeting her husband Rocky (Vansh Bhardwaj), and very little is revealed about either of the characters before their marriage ceremony takes place. However Rocky’s powerful temper becomes clear very quickly, as he begins hitting Chand whenever she displeases him. While not that graphic, the scenes of domestic violence are quite unsettling, primarily because Bhardwaj is almost expressionless in his performance — you can never be sure when he is going to strike.

All of this takes place in the presence of Rocky’s family, who inhabit the same small suburban home. No one does anything to prevent him from battering Chand; his mother (Balinder Johal) is so conventional in her ways that she sometimes even seems to be encouraging the violence. But each time Chand is assaulted, we understand less and less about why Rocky chooses violence as his only means of expression. The only thing we know is that if an arranged marriage leads to abuse, then it is wrong — but that much is clear from the first time Chand is slapped for offering an unsolicited opinion.

There’s more to Heaven on Earth than brutality, but it’s hard to be certain what that is. Mehta based her script on an Indian folktale about a lonely wife and a cobra snake, so viewers should not be in total shock when a snake is born out of the ground from a supposedly magic potion that Chand dumps in her backyard. The problem is, up to this point, the film has shown us so much realistic violence that the sudden turn towards the mythical takes you aback. Thankfully, Chand herself seems equally confused by this turn of events; she starts seeing the cobra come inside the house and even experiences hallucinations where it transforms into a lifelike representation of the husband she wishes she had.

Preity Zinta plays this confusion well — too well, actually; she is so bewildered in the second half of the film that it’s impossible to pinpoint when her character goes from timid to headstrong. One moment Chand can’t look anyone in the eye, the next she’s forcing a climactic confrontation with Rocky and his family. How did this happen? All I know for sure is that the snake had something to do with it.

Strangely little time is given to clarify this uncertainty before the abrupt ending — one wonders whether a scene or two is missing. Mehta definitely wants to teach viewers something beyond the perils of arranged marriages, but her blurring of reality and fantasy makes for a film that’s more perplexing than intriguing.