If you are a South Asian and saw the latest episode of Ms. Marvel, the train station scene would have hit too close to home for your comfort. If you are part of the global audience, you just witnessed a fraction of the pain and suffering, millions went through during one of the world’s largest mass migrations. India and Pakistan were divided in 1947 when the British left the country, and this moment in the history of these two countries is marred by violence, the loss of lives, and angst of separation. The partition of the Indian subcontinent has very rarely been visualized on screen. Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, director of Ms. Marvel episodes 4 and 5 has done a brilliant job of depicting the event that still affects millions across the two countries.
The two-time Oscar and seven-time Emmy winning documentary maker, Obaid-Chinoy, was a perfect fit for taking Kamala (Iman Vellani) back to her roots as the filmmaker has devoted her life to documenting the partition of India. In a recent interview with THR, she revealed, “I started an oral history archive in Pakistan in 2007. It is the largest oral history archive of the partition in Pakistan. So we’ve recorded over 3,000 interviews, and we have over 40,000 photographs from 1947 in our archive. We also built the first museum about partition in Pakistan.”
During episodes 4 and 5, Kamala goes back in time to learn more about her powers and her great-grandmother Aisha. Drawing from her own work, the Pakistani-Candian director also looked into oral histories from the Citizens Archive of India as well as Margaret Bourke-White’s photographs, who in 1947 photographed the processions leaving their homes, refugee tent camps, and train stations. Obaid-Chinoy explained,
So in episode four and episode five, every single frame that deals with the partition is a recreation of an image that I had seen and wanted to bring to life in this story. For the first time, we had been given the opportunity to tell the story of partition to an audience that is truly global and international. So the script came with a responsibility on my part to do justice to that time. So many of our stories and so many of our families are linked to 1947, and it was something that I took very seriously in recreating.
Episode 5 reveals that Kamala was actually the one who helped young Sana (Zion Usman) onto the train, not Aisha (Mehwish Hayat). Obaid-Chinoy wanted to build the tension on a level where fans and Kamala could feel the pain of the separated father, the mother, and the daughter. She explained,
So for the first half of partition, I wanted Kamala to be Kamala. I did not want her to be a superhero because she was going to be bearing witness to this very important historical moment. And when she walked on the platform for the first time, I wanted her to hear snippets of people’s conversations and to understand what it meant for people to leave their homes, their lives, their best friends and their family members. I wanted her to understand where she was before she found her great grandmother [Aisha] and saved her grandmother [Sana].
The director also clarified the trail of stars that confused the fans as to who created them Kamala, Sana, or Aisha. She revealed, “They came from Kamala. She saved her grandmother. When she fell, that broke the platforms that she was creating, but it resulted in the trail of stars, which Hasan saw.”
After the events of episode 5, Kamala is expected to be back in New Jersey to save Bruno and Kamran from DODC. Ms. Marvel finale will air on July 13.