STRANGELY UNMOVING: Jimi Mistry and Kristin Kreuk
by MATTHEW HAYS
Given the rather dreadful state of world affairs, from the situation in Darfur to the intensifying sectarian violence in Iraq, the idea of a film about tortured love that runs across ethnic divides seems awfully timely.
Canadian filmmaker Vic Sarin has apparently been obsessed with making just such a story, after his upbringing in India. There, Sarin witnessed ethnic and class divides that he found horrifying, and was particularly touched by the story of two of his father’s friends, a Sikh man and Muslim woman who loved each other but were forbidden from marrying. Both ended up committing suicide rather than face living without each other.
With this inspiration, Sarin has co-written and directed Partition, set in India during the 1947 partition. Taking the Romeo and Juliet template and applying it to this period, Sarin has arrived at an unremarkable, if well-meaning, feature film. Kristin Kreuk (Smallville) plays a young Muslim woman who, while in transit with her family, is attacked in a Sikh massacre of Muslims. She survives, but is separated from her family. She is then taken in by a Sikh (Jimi Mistry) who is threatened by community members for harbouring a Muslim. Mistry points out that Kreuk killed no one, and argues that she should be left alone. Ethnic hatred runs deep, and the two have a difficult time, but manage to build a life together and have a child.
Things really go downhill when Kreuk finds a way to reconnect with her family who, she learns, is alive and well and living in Pakistan. She goes there only to find that her brothers are repulsed by her relationship with a Sikh, and forbid her from maintaining such a bond.
Partition’s heart is in the right place, but the film suffers from its sheer predictability. Literary references aside, Sarin has said he rooted his style in that of David Lean and productions like Doctor Zhivago. That makes sense, because too much about Partition feels paint-by-numbers, including the Oliver Stone ’80s movie technique of slipping into slow-mo to crank up the dramatic volume. The result is a strangely unmoving film.
Partition opens Friday, Feb. 2
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