The trial of fire.

The Movie: Fire, directed by Deepa Mehta
Recommendation: Me!
Reason: Deepa Mehta's a good director with a good feel for characters.

To understand the title, here's a snippet of the tale it comes from. Mehta's a little heavy on the metaphor in this movie, bringing up the idea of a trial by fire not once, not twice, but three times (and possibly more, those are just the ones I counted). And that's not including the literal one. As usual, she has written interesting, compelling characters for a very good cast. As a director, she's a 'recycler'-the stars of her movies cross over from one to the next.

Nandita Das wasn't as good in Earth as she was in Fire. I suppose her role was a little meatier here, with more room to really display her talent. She's sweet and interesting here, without any significant failings. Though the script is occasionally thin (and repetetive), she's quite solid. Likewise, Shabana Azmi did an excellent job in her role.

This is Deepa Mehta's earliest film, and it's nice to appreciate her growth as a writer and a director. She takes a fairly biased view of men in her first couple of works. Their characters come off as thin and hollow, especially here in Fire. It's an early-career sort of mistake-I look forward to seeing Water to see how far she's come.

-84/365 down, 281/365 to go