Water (2005) directed by Deepa Mehta. ✭✭✭✭✭
I would like to strongly recommend a film that I saw last night. It is called “Water” directed by Deepa Mehta. It is a story of the fate of widowed women in 1938 India, so on the surface it is film about social reform and the plight of the under-privileged. But. of course, it is also a film about hope and ascent and being the beautiful lotus in the polluted water.
The film speaks about the fact that real change and ascent is often something gifted to the next generation and not for oneself. This may not be the case now with Self Realization, but still the point is selfless struggle is for the benefit of others.
“Water” was at first filmed in India, but the production was disrupted and closed down by Hindu fundamentalist, no doubt angered by the film’s questioning of the dictates of the established order, that widowed women are untouchables and less than whole. Eventually the film was remounted and shot in Sri Lanka. It was filmed simultaneously in both English and Hindi, resulting in two movies, but it was the Hindi that has been released. (Both are available on DVD.)
In appearance, this is an Indian film. It even includes about five or six songs in the Indian fashion, but not sung by the actors. The songs are composed by A.R. Rahman of “Lagaan” fame. But this is not an Indian film, it is Canadian. And I would even dare to say that it is the best Canadian film ever made – deep, subtle and quiet and a beautiful thing to be remembered. It is directed by an Indian-born filmmaker who has made her career in Toronto (often with controversial and questionable films), but now has risen to produce something really great.
My other feeling in watching this movie was, “Why aren’t Indians making films like this? Why does it take the Canadian government (through Telefilm Canada) to finance this film (twice)?” This film is certainly not Bollywood, it is in the rich tradition of Satyajit Ray, the great Bengali filmmaker and student of Rabindranath Tagore.
In the last scene we see Gandhi speaking, “I used to think that God is Truth,” he says. “Now I know Truth is God.” To stand up for Truth is to be that fragrant lotus in the dirty water.
The film has done well in Canada, but is certainly not in the mainstream of awareness, and is now being distributed theatrically in the US and other countries. You can probably watch the trailer on the internet. Try: ‘Water’ Trailer
Richard, Canada
Chris said,
September 6, 2006 at 11:10 pm
Saw this film at the Edinburgh Film Festival and it is the most beautiful Indian film I have seen. Very touching and with a strong message. The fact it upset the fundametalists is another plus in its favour. Definitely worth watching.
Richard Payment said,
September 7, 2006 at 4:15 pm
I called the film “Canadian” and you call it “Indian.” I have heard the director call it “a film of the diaspora,” that great flood of Indians who have left India and live in a worldwide community. Maybe it will be these will be the people who will really transcend the boundaries and bring the world togther.
Anupam Canyon said,
October 6, 2006 at 6:17 pm
I disagree with the author of this movie review. I am a yogi as well. I started watching it and having being born and brought up in India for 25 years I could see how wrong the movie has been made. The movie not only shows an ancient India in an exaggerated way, but also depicts a negative culture prevailing in a minor fragment of the society to the masses. Not only is such culture extinct – that is shown in the film, but it has been presented in a commercial way. Same principle that the newspapers work on …ie. Sensalization of the masses by showing the negative aspect.
I should also mention here the the director Deepa Mehta is highly controversial figure in India and criticized for her most of her previous works about negative topics such as homosexuals in India (Fire) which, needless to say, was banned nationwide. She is actually living in Canada and making movies there as no Indian will watch or buy her movies.
I suggest please be careful with movies made by this director. They can carry lot of negative energy in them.
Vic said,
April 18, 2007 at 9:56 pm
I agree with Anupam. The creator behind the movie can make a nice motion picture, but her topics are quite awkward and non-representative for normal indian middle class. I have watched her other movies Earth (about India – Pakistan partition) and Fire (Female Homosexuals in New Dehli). In both movies, I could see a strong inclination to drag the viewer’s attention to gross and raw topics. Detailed screenplays involving private parts of the body… which was quite sad to see with my parents by my side.
The producer is a milder version of Quentin Tarantino/Roberto Rodriguez (Sin City, Kill Bill, Grindhouse) who rides on sensationalism and sensuality and just for kicks, to make things interesting – makes the movie in an Indian context. Take away the Indian context and the movies are vehicles to project the mindsets of a very base class. Unfortunately, these hidden sensual undertones are somehow the primary requirements for getting into film festivals.
The director is very skilled and her work as a film-maker is commendable. But, if you want a yogi’s opinion, I would proscribe it.
ps. I bought a DVD of the film “Iqbal” (another nice, clean, Cricket related movie) and “Water” was included in this double DVD. After being snuffled by “Earth” and burnt by “Fire”, I had no inclination of drowning in “Water”, hehehe!
Aparna Gangopadhyay said,
November 12, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Water
Last of the trilogy by Deepa Mehta – Earth | Fire | Water.
In all the 3 movies she has shown what utter failures have Indian men been …all throughout the ages – be in personal family life and responsibilities or Administrative structuring of the Nation to Social justice !!
Earth showed the scenario during Indian struggle for Independence. How the non-participating (in struggle for Indian freedom) citizens of India suffered – for everything was sudden for them – they were either not prepared to face the brunt of it or were very sure that a couple of Indian freedom fighters will never be able to oust the Britishers who had been ruling them for over 200 years . Thus when the momentum of the Independence war took over – their reaction was rather unstable – not rather …very unstable. The mostly illiterate, non motivated , selfish , unaware and non-caring Indians took this opportunity to take personal revenge !!And thus we had cases of rapes and molestation to even murders …with bodies cut into pieces and sent back in the train …its just unimaginable that the same Indians who claim to have a rich and varied heritage were capable of such gory crime !! So we see here that the fact that a struggle for independence was going on was not effectively propagated….well – with only the print and audio (radio) media available to the commoners…it was not very much possible also. But anyways, candidates could have been recruited in each locality – who should have constantly motivated the commoners of what’s happening and how independence is going to help us in the long run. Probably lack of this knowledge led to such a gory situation – with people killing each other on the streets !! What good/great was achieved when the women of the houses were dragged on the streets and raped in public?! It’s all the women in India together (the status of Indian women) who represent the Mother aspect of Bharat Mata (Mother India)– taking whose name people were giving up their lives – …and ironically the women were the worst affected – insulted, sold out (refer : Pinjar) and dumped !!
Fire showed the status of 2 wives wed to 2 brothers of the same family who were incapable of providing them with the worldly pleasures. The boredom seen in typically miserly and uncouth families has been shown in detail here. Thus the 2 wives seek some wee bit pleasure from each other by becoming lesbians. Basically most Indian women till today are more or less taught from early childhood (by elderly ladies of the family) that one day they will be wed off and their Prince Charming will woo them away to paradise ! Plus there are fairy tales and movies which further increase their expectation for worldly pleasures (focused a whole lot on ‘sex’) – failing which they dive into depression dungeons and remain sadly ever after as ‘Desperate housewives’ or utterly frustrated wives….. So its such frustrated women who give birth to their kinds of frustrated and depressed kids… which slow down the progress of the nation as a whole tremendously !
Water – again showing the position of women during the turbulent times of Indian war for independence. Some educated Indian men – after having mixed with the elite British class and watching the kind of respect the British Ladies enjoyed – in spite of being educated, outgoing, in spite of being widows they still used to be part of normal community – they realized – Thank God fully – that widows are not taboos after all!
Thus they worked on promoting widow remarriage and stopped Sati Pratha – burning of wife on death of husband ! But alas – the percentage (of educated and cultured men) was meager thus this message was not propagated/ promoted / publicized – effectively (lack of multimedia). Moreover the women – esp. the aged ones who had already suffered being a widow and had seen no happiness whatsoever in life – saw to it that the rest of the women too fall in the same dungeon ! Thus it was usually seen – that once a woman became a widow – several women – relatives/siblings/neighbours of the husband screamed from all sides saying things like the wife has eaten her husband and that she is a ‘witch’ – but the same women – on seeing a widower (a male having lost his wife) were very keen to get him married again – this time it was not said that the man is a ‘demon’ who has eaten his wife !! So such was the scenario in those days – superstitious, uneducated, bunch of jealous people !! Women were and always have been jealous of another woman’s happiness thus the more the women were sad and depressed – the more was the sadistic pleasures that the loser women drew – basically suffering from abnormal psychology !!
So Water shows the life of widows during the 1940’s. They lived in dire poverty. The elderly widow took the opportunity to make some money by sending (basically supplying) the young widows to old but rich mongrels in the locality – as prostitutes. Some did but some denied. In this movie, Lisa Ray is a young , uneducated but beautiful widow who has an 8 years old widow as her close friend. A eunuch – who is the comrade of the Head widow plus a pimp supplying women to sex starved old mongrels – somehow manages to convince the Head widow to take Lisa to a 70 plus old haggard sex starved debauch dog – who lived across the river. He had a wife – played by Waheeda Reheman – who knew that whores were supplied to her husband but could not do anything about it – since wives were just kept as uneducated ‘baby producing and upbringing’ machines during those times.
Unknowingly Lisa accompanies the pimp and is devoured by the old haggard mongrel. She is angry and tells the Head Widow that she will never do any such thing for money. In comes John Abraham and seeing Lisa’s beauty, he falls for her. He was an educated young man and knew that widow remarriage was allowed by the Government. So he confesses his love to her and she is very happy about it. There is another widow who was a bit educated. She came to know that widow remarriage was allowed and encourages Lisa to elope with him. The head Widow comes to know and shuts her up in the room and even cuts her hair to make her look ugly. The 8 years young widow – Lisa’s friend – hits (kicks) the Head widow hard while massaging her back – the Head widow was about to collapse because of this incident …she remembers it…and even takes revenge from the 8 years old child !
In the mean while Lisa elopes with John and he takes her to his house across the river. Just as they were nearing the house – he pointed at his house and she saw – to her utter dismay – that it was John’s father who was the 70+ plus debauch mongrel who had raped her. Her happiness was short lived and she asks the him to turn the boat and tells him to ask his father all about the incident.
His father takes it all very coolly and suggests that he can keep the widow as his ‘kept’- not wife – so that both father and son could use her !!John comes to know that his father is a mongrel-ish debauch and severs all relationship with him – hearing which his mother, Waheeda ,kisses his forehead – that is all she could do to appreciate her son’s decision of leaving the house !
Lisa approaches the widow Ashram but is shooed away by the Head widow (actually the Head asks her to now become a 24×7 sex worker !). Having nowhere to go – she commits suicide. John was too late to save her.
After a while, the Head Widow sends the 8 years old widow – no breasts developed, no periods started – to the same old haggard to devour ( you see the old haggard had no qualms about the fact that his son had left him for his whore-monger nature!!) !!The child comes back unconscious and the pimp runs away – when the wee bit educated widow finds out the injustice that happened to the small girl – she takes her to the railway station and sends her away with John – who was basically an activist in the struggle for Indian independence. In the last scene the child widow is shown escaping the ‘widowhood’ dungeon that she had reached at the mere age of 6. Even parents did not accept their own daughters because of this ‘widowhood’ label during those days !!
Inference : So you see folks – such women suffered unnecessarily – no fault of theirs – just for couple of jealous , illiterate and superstitious women and ‘debauch’ selfish men – young girls suffered endlessly ! The society /locality people were blissfully oblivious of their deplorable condition – which meant that people were (have always been ) selfish and self centered – they never understood the ‘Unity and integrity is strength’ phrase. Fellow Indian citizens were dying – without food, shelter, water but people were more interested in making money , buying jewellery and going abroad for further studies ! The fact that ‘uncared for’ women can turn out to be very dangerous in the long run never occurred to anyone! ‘Struggle for existence’ is a basic human instinct – you need food, clothes and shelter to survive – which one can achieve by working, begging, borrowing or stealing . The easiest way out for a woman is of course to become a ‘kept’ to some rich debauch swine – like we saw in ‘Chokher Bali’ where Ashwairya was an educated widow and did not even think twice before ruining her friend’s (Raima) marriage !
The status of Waheeda in this movie should have made the educated class women become more alert about their own future ! Women will grow old and begin to look ugly and decaying – so? Does it give the husband the right to hire poverty stricken widows or whores to ‘do the needful’ with? – and imagine such were the characters of men for whom the wives were burnt alive (Sati Pratha)!
So folks – as a repercussion of this utterly deplorable condition of women – we now have ‘Aggressive, ruthless, coarse, harsh & shameless’ women ruling over us! God is not involved here – it’s the ‘lost souls’ who take revenge – who cannot forgive the wrongs done to them – how they were exploited and cheated and killed and used ! This is probably the reason why the great saints and seers always asked mankind to forgive and forget – for they knew if they carry their ‘hurts’ on the other side of the ‘iron gate’ – they will come back to avenge!
And should they not avenge? Shouldn’t he (the haggard old mongrel) – John’s father – be punished? They are punished – this is what ‘Karma phal’ is all about. So you get to see women taking birth in the house of pimps and prostitutes or being born to street beggars – even boys are born to them – whose limbs are cut and they are made to beg on the streets – to draw sympathy of the passer-bys so that they get some alms. What a pathetic life they have ! Does it not make you wonder why/how it happens?…well ‘what you sow , so shall you reap’ – if not in this life , in the next life you’ll be made to pay – for all your deeds –bad, worst or ugly. You are rewarded for good deeds as well – like being born to well established, loving parents etc.
TV Shows said,
January 23, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Actually I didn’t know this film called “Water” until I read this review…I was amaze with the idea of the film and inspire me a lot…There is more to life to live for I guess…Thanks for the great review…
Actors, Movies, and Songs » Water (2005) directed by Deepa Mehta. Sahaja Movie Reviews said,
February 7, 2008 at 12:02 am
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mary said,
November 10, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I recently have seen this movie and I’ve found it extraordinary. First of all, because through this film is possible to understand what are the conditions of life of poor widower women. they have no other chance to live!!! and that’s why Shri Mataji has had big compassion for them and opened a centre for abandoned women with teir children!! I suggest also “Born into brothels”, a movie about children living a desperate life in Calcutta….one day they meet a photographer and their lives change…forever!!!!!