Deepa Mehta is one of Canada's most acclaimed filmmakers, and several of her award-winning movies have been adaptations of beloved books. This fall she is being honoured as part of TIFF's Cinematheque program, with a retrospective of her work, called Heaven on Earth. The final film, screening on November 15, 2015 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, is Midnight's Children, adapted from Salman Rushdie's Booker Prize-winning novel.
We had the chance to speak with TIFF Senior Programmer Steve Gravestock, who originated and curated the retrospective, about Mehta's newest film, her adaptation process and his own favourites amongst the films selected for Heaven on Earth — plus what's next at TIFF!
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Open Book:
Tell us about programming "Heaven on Earth: The Films of Deepa Mehta". Why was this the right time for a retrospective?
Steve Gravestock:
The retrospective was timed to coincide with the release of Deepa’s latest film, one of her most adventurous works, Beeba Boys. It’s a movie about gangsters in the Sikh and Punjabi communities. It focuses particularly on the paradoxes within this specific subculture, for instance how many of these guys live with their parents in large homes in otherwise sleepy suburban areas. It’s very much in the tradition of the great gangster movies like The Godfather saga which contrasted the home (the realm of women) and the outside world (the province of men). Disaster inevitably strikes when these two worlds merge or come in conflict.
It was frankly high time to do a retrospective on Deepa. She has a huge body of celebrated work — much of it dealing with social issues others simply shy away from. What’s singular about Mehta’s work is its humanist focus. She empathizes, quite profoundly, with those on the margins whose stories are either seldom told or simply ignored. See, for example, the abused wife in Heaven on Earth, or the women forced into servitude and prostitution in Water; Jessica Tandy’s character in Camilla or the elderly man and recent émigré in Sam and Me. She often pulls out different threads in historical events people have already made their minds up about — asking us to reassess our positions. Her take on Partition in films like Earth, one of the handful of great epics made in Canada, or more recently Midnight's Children, does not simply reiterate a view of one faction. This is often why she presents events through the eyes of innocents — the young girl in Water, the sheltered bride who takes refuge in fairy and folk tales in Heaven on Earth. They’re better and quicker at spotting hypocrisy, cant and desires.
OB:
As book lovers, we're especially interested in the adaptations in the series, The Republic of Love and Midnight's Children. Do you see anything unique in these films, as adaptations, any change in Mehta's approach or treatment?
SG:
Midnight's Children is interesting for the scope of both the adaptation and the novel — and because Rushdie was directly involved. I think Deepa did an excellent job of bringing the book’s magic realist sensibility to the screen, especially in the early sequences which have a kind of folk tale feel to them.
Republic of Love is a very interesting example of an adaptation. The Carol Shields novel was set in Winnipeg and the fact that it was moved to Toronto upset a lot of Winnipeggers who felt that the unique geography and lay-out of that city (especially the warren of underground tunnels, a metaphor for the connections in the novel), and its smaller, more tightly knit population, were essential to the book’s theme.
As a Torontonian though, I really liked the way it utilized this city. It was very much about how Torontonians spend their time in specific communities, even enclaves, which leads to a somewhat misleading even fantastical view of the city and by extension the world.
Plus, though there are other romantic views of Toronto, I don’t think there’s a more romantic onscreen presentation than the one in Republic.
Another adaptation, Mehta's Earth is based on Bapsi Sidhwa's novel Cracking India (making it the only film in the Elements Trilogy not based on Mehta's own original script).
OB:
What do you think draws directors to adapting certain books? How would you describe the adaptation process?
SG:
Honestly, I don’t think I’m qualified to answer that question, but I’m guessing it’s the subject matter and the aesthetic and almost certainly the language or imagery. I can totally understand why Mehta would want to adapt Rushdie or Shields, especially given the kind of magic realism one encounters in some of her work, and the fact that she’s addressed the same events at least in the case of Partition. I would be more surprised if she wanted to adapt Burroughs or Ballard like Cronenberg. Though I could see her doing something by Ballard actually, especially after Beeba Boys.
OB:
What films in the retrospective are you most personally excited about?
SG:
Earth and Heaven on Earth are my personal favourites. But it will be nice to show Camilla; Sam and Me and Republic of Love. Camilla isn’t Deepa’s best movie but there are really lovely things in it — and it’s a truly touching swan song for the great Jessica Tandy, who seems to be having a lovely time throughout. Sam and Me was very well received when it first came out but I think it’s now kind of underrated though for me it’s one of our great films about the immigrant experience. Republic wasn’t really discovered by the audience it should have been but those fog of love walks Bruce Greenwood and Emilia Fox take on Queen Street really stuck with me and the cast, which includes James Fox; Claire Bloom; Jackie Burroughs; and Gary Farmer is a genuine pleasure to watch.
OB:
What's next for TIFF Cinematheque?
SG:
Tons of stuff at the Lightbox as always — a huge Warhol exhibition, a great stop-motion animation series Jesse Wente put together; screenings of Michael Snow’s work, Jackie Burroughs’ A Winter Tan (a raunchy feminist classic adapted from an even raunchier feminist memoir) and Peter Pearson’s great neo-Western A Paperback Hero with Keir Dullea in attendance (both free). In January, we launch Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival, which for me is always one of the year’s highlights.
Steve Gravestock has selected Canadian feature films for TIFF since 2004, and previously programmed films from India, Australia, and the Netherlands. As a Senior Programmer at TIFF he is responsible for the organization’s year-round Canadian programming initiatives, including the Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival and the year-round Canadian Open Vault programme featuring homegrown classics. Gravestock also oversees TIFF’s ongoing series of monographs on Canadian films and filmmakers.
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