Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.
Mehta has created a pair of memorable characters who are easy to empathize with, and who gratifyingly are never transformed from flesh-and-blood individuals into mere symbols. Read full review
In filmmaker Mehta's deft hands, the outcome is handled with power and sensitivity. [22 Aug1 997, pg.N40] Read full review
The richness of characters make this movie shine. It's just that, somehow, a certain sense of fire is missing. Read full review
The film lacks flow, unfolding in a rat-a-tat series of short, artfully lensed scenes -- individually nice but collectively jerky. Read full review
The two women are very beautiful, gentle and sad together, and the movie is all but stolen by Chowdhry, as the servant who lurks constantly in the background providing, with his very body language, a comic running commentary. Read full review
For a film with such volatile subject matter, the performances are subdued and naturalistic. Fire burns with a rare flame. Read full review
As a director, Mehta would do well to stop smothering her empathy in glibness (she uses the family's ancient mute grandmother as a sitcom prank), but her empathy pokes through nonetheless. Read full review
Audacious, yet sensitive, Fire may shock traditionalists but is the sort of film that ought to win Indian cinema a whole new audience. Read full review
The title comes from Indian legend in which Lord Rama tests the purity of his wife by a flaming ordeal (which we see enacted in an open-air pageant with comic overtones of Bunuel). This bit of mythology too handily prefigures a major element in the film's conclusion. Read full review
Written and directed by Deepa Mehta, this Indian production is not filmed very interestingly, but reveals much about conflicts between traditional and modern attitudes in Indian society. Read full review
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