A Thin Wall (2015) Online

Most films about the partitioning of the Indian subcontinent are dramatic and inevitably show the horrific violence that ensued. In Deepa Mehta's feature film, "Earth," a little girl asks her mother "Can you break a country?" and demonstrates what that may look like by flinging down a china plate and breaking it into pieces. The answer to her question is yes, yes you can break a country if you are the colonial power. You can send an aristocrat with little knowledge and no experience of the subcontinent to do so, using but a map, census data, and the flow of a river.

Although the partitioning was conducted on the basis of religion, Cyril John Radcliffe, 1st Viscount Radcliffe GBE, PC, QC, FBA, was able to make arbitrary decisions and award a Muslim majority sector to India and a Hindu majority sector to Pakistan. His decision would be irrevocable and would decide the fate of millions: the one million who perished and the at least twenty million who were displaced in both Bengal and Punjab. This was the largest forced migration in human history. At the age of 48, Sir Cyril was sent to New Delhi in the monsoon season of 1947, barely 37 days before India would be partitioned into two independent nations. Apparently, he was soon struck by Delhi belly, which could hardly have facilitated judicious decisions. He was appointed Chairman of the Boundary Commission whose sole job was to submit a report that would contain "the partition map." Now that's imperial arrogance.

Pakistani American filmmaker Mara Ahmed's documentary, "A Thin Wall," produced in collaboration with an Indian filmmaker, Surbhi Dewan, was shot on both sides of Sir Cyril's border line. What the imperial powers shattered, the film attempts to restore and recuperate through the power of personal memory. Clearly, the subcontinent can never be whole again and, in fact, seems to be fragmenting further and further. But in this film reconciliation becomes possible through the simple force of good faith. None of this is sentimental or simply nostalgic. There are so many stories about Pakistani taxi drivers refusing fares for Indians who return to visit their ancestral homes in Pakistan, and Pakistani children who come to India for medical treatment overwhelmed with cards and toys. The film is a poem to the power of people, not people as a mass, but person to person, in the creation of goodwill and resolution of conflict.

The stories that the people in the film tell are, intentionally, family stories, and family stories are what we grew up hearing. Urvashi Butalia's ground breaking book "The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India" uses testimonio, a powerful and potent mode for recording history. Ahmed's film uses the oral history rendered by family members. As someone who belongs to the first generation of Indians born after independence, Ahmed's family members, and Dewan's, sounded familiar to me. They could have been my relatives and family friends. Partition touched my extended family. My father's sister (now deceased) remained in Karachi, and I never once met her, although I knew my father's other siblings, all seven of my other paternal aunts and uncles, very well. My Karachi aunt's son visited us once as a young man, but I have never seen her daughter, who still resides in Karachi. An "Aunt," a family friend, not a relative, came from a Tamil Brahmin family that was domiciled in Lahore, and all her stories were about the unrivalled culture of Lahore. Her cultural sensibility had much more to do with Lahore Muslim than Tamil Brahmin. Other "aunts" and "uncles" (in the subcontinent all your parents' friends are aunts and uncles) told us stories of the homes they left behind in West Punjab and East Bengal.

By using poetry, narrative and artwork this lyrical film, by its very modality, demonstrates the power of non-violent means. So much animosity has arisen between these two nations that were once one, so much hostility, so many trolls on both sides conducting wars in cyberspace. These are mostly younger people. Ahmed's film reminds us that the very generation that suffered the most because of Partition can yet talk about their pasts with love and longing.

It is a love and longing that the reviewer who called the film "Indian kitsch" does not understand and will never understand. The phrase "Indian kitsch" tells me that. First of all, Mara Ahmed is a Pakistani American, so the reviewer does not even understand the dynamics and tensions involved in making this cross border film. Secondly, what is "kitsch" to him is historical trauma to us, and his phraseology betrays his western orientation and centeredness. He does not understand our emotions and what memory means to us and trivializes them. Nostalgia narratives are memory events, and they are critical for reconciliation. One of the most interesting aspects of the film was how it captures the voices of people of the older generation, people who spoke with mutual respect, civility and affection of each other. The countries are drifting further and further apart, and the anger and animosity on both sides is increasing. Our elders saw a chance for reconciliation, but we did not take it, and now it is too late. However, while it may be too late for reconciliation, it is not too late for peace if we remember that we are one people on two sides of a thin wall, and that is the important reminder the film provides. This is an honest, artistic and poignant film, and its employment of the voices of relatives and friends is not lazy, as the "kitsch" reviewer seems to suggest, but central to the genre of testimonio, a genre he does not seem familiar with.

Mara Ahmed's gentle handling of the stories of the Partition is very effective. The personal accounts from both sides of the border captures the human toll of this devastating chapter in the history of the the Indian subcontinent.

The film had a deep resonance with me as I grew up hearing these stories from my parents and grandparents who had gone through the trauma of displacement and loss. One can only imagine how hard it must have been to leave everything behind ; homes, communities, friends and even family members.

I found that the film flows very well and the artwork and animation add depth and texture.

These stories need to be told, and 'A Thin Wall' does it well.

Amra J.A.

A Thin Wall is a lush and important documentary. Deftly and tenderly handled, it is a compelling, beautiful, textured exploration of the legacy, consequences and residual grief from the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan that led to one million deaths and displacement of millions of inhabitants. As I am someone seemingly not directly impacted by this story, it was illuminating. As Arundhati Roy has so powerfully reminded us: "There's really no such thing as the 'voiceless'. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard."

Mara Ahmed not only found the voices of those willing to speak of the continued pain of a separated region, but those who lived through the separation. The personal accounts from Pakistanis and Indians humanize the continuing cost of this "parting" colonial act.

Captured before this first hand witnessing could be lost, these people speak courageously of friends lost in childhood, the respect and interpenetration of the Islamic and Hindi religions in daily life prior to the divide, the change of home and lifestyle, the deaths or near death of those moved. Subsequent generations also live with this inheritance of what could have been and what is because of the separation and recount the impact. These words are more profoundly experienced by Ahmed's adroit use of the illustrations, colors, textiles and sounds of the regions. Her artistic hand shows even in the choice of location for the interviews.

Ahmed also gives voice to those expatriates who too are impacted by this tearing asunder of the communities, even while no longer living in proximity. In nationalist fortified Pakistan and India it is harder to speak of the pain of dreaming for a once again united country. Some of the loudest voices for reunification are those no longer situated in the armed camps of the nation states.

While watching this film, my experience was that every question that arose for me was addressed during the course of the film. This is a challenging, engaging and important work. Truly, it is one of the best documentaries I have seen and should be required viewing when speaking of the effects of colonialism, investigating the power of the documentary, for those interested in the history of the partition specifically, or really for anyone.

I have seen the film and heard Mara Ahmed speak about it. The film's self-supplied descriptions and explanations are disingenuous at best. The film's narrative arc is a confusing mash-up of interviews largely with the female family members of the two co-producers.

Their contributions to the film are more often nostalgia narratives than memory events. They pine for a unified Pakistan/India nation that is described as a bygone golden age of conviviality between Muslim minorities and Hindu majorities. In post-screening conversation Ahmed admits that for the poor and disenfranchised the partition is of no consequence and they are not at all represented in the film.

The producers superimpose a thematic trope that if enough (well-to-do) natives of both states "dream" unification it can practically become a reality - a dubious assertion. They demonize the partition and largely blame the British for both it and the violent consequences.

The film never builds a compelling historically accurate narrative and following what logic a viewer can tease out of it still is neither satisfying nor compelling.

The film's claim to being a documentary is thin gruel. Nor is anything about the film urgent or particularly relevant to contemporary issues except as a marketing instrument for gullible academic audiences.

IMO, don't waste your time.