Review: Water

Posted by: Scott Hayes  •  November 4, 2005 @ 11:59am

Filed under: Reviews

Water, by Deepa Mehta, is a fantastic movie that is both Canadian and international at the same time (director Mehta was born in India and the film was shot in Sri Lanka). Its story is thoughtful and emotional, sad and uplifting, factual and fictional. It is everything that a film should be. Mehta is truly a modern master.

Water is the third of a trilogy with elemental names. Whereas this film explores the theme of religion, Fire was an essay on sexuality and Earth examined politics. Set in the 1930s against the cultural revolution of Gandhian India, Water dives straight to the deep end of Chuyia, a girl of about eight who doesn't even remember getting married when she is told that her husband has died. She is taken to an ashram, an institution for widows, where she is abandoned by her family and left to live the rest of her days in solemn and somber reflection. And so begins her journey to learn her position and fight to become her own person.

I still vividly remember Mehta's powerful Camilla from 1994. She also directed the spirited Bollywood/Hollywood a few years ago. Neither really came close to capturing the roller coaster of moods and the plethora of issues bandying about like a bunch of plinko balls. First, the theme of Water recurs as a plot device or a mood elevator: rain, wash water, well water, the river Ganges, etc. Also, even though Chuyia lives with a dozen or so other women, there is still a kind of caste system at play and, as such, there is politics within the ashram also.

What a fine little actor Sarala is. At the post-screening Q&A session, Mehta related that she was within two weeks of beginning production when she auditioned the young girl who did not even speak Hindi. She spoke Senalese and was so impressive that she was hired (obviously) and learned all of her lines phonetically â€" not to mention her phenomenal emotional range â€" and she has all of her hair shaved off in the movie. Chuyia's presence in the ashram is revolutionary because of her age, so the comparison with her and Gandhi is apt.

These victims of tradition live a kind of half life, slightly purgatorial because their religion teaches them that they were parts of their husbands. A woman with a dead husband is in a living limbo, alive but dead to the rest of the world. As Chuyia struggles to adapt, she makes different friends. One is Aunty, an elderly woman who talks of nothing but her desire for sweets. Another is Kalyani (Ray), the most beautiful woman of the ashram, who is pimped out by the headmistress Madhumati to make money for the rest of the household. Kalyani falls in love with Narayana (Abraham), a romantic Gandhian idealist. But widows are not meant to remarry, so the pot gets stirred up there too. There are so many wildly varied comedic, dramatic, uplifting, and depressing elements that when the end finally comes, the 'water' theme expresses itself once more in an interactive way as there were no dry eyes at all in the house.

Water is unforgettable, powerful in its expression, beautiful, and tragic. Mehta praised both her native India for inspiring for artistic visions and her adoptive Canada for giving her the freedom to realize her creations. Before the film started, she said that it was about "compassion in an increasingly intolerant world". Despite the turmoil that exists within this story, it is ultimately hopeful about the human race. The impact was great.