Water

Blog: Who among the reviewers did you agree with more and why?
***Optional Blog query: View Deepa Mehta’s other highly controversial film Fire and post a reaction to it.*** http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060504/REVIEWS/60315003/1023

Another great tear-jerker. After watching the wrong version of Earth (mine – Ukrainian farmers join together to purchase their own tractor while trying to become independent of a wealthy landowner…a Silent film from the 30’s…sigh.) I rented Water, and am glad for it.
Set in India in 1938 during the rise of Gandhi, Water, by Deepa Mehta, tells the story of a child bride who has become a widow very soon after her marriage. She is sent to live in an ashram by her father, where she soon has her hair cut and shaved, and told that because her husband is dead, she is half dead as well and must live like a corpse. She can only eat once a day and must live in self-denial. We later learn that besides living in self-denial (living chaste and not remarrying) she could have been burned with her dead husband (good grief) or married his younger brother.

Ever the radical, Gandhi sets tongues wagging by saying things like ‘widows need love, too’ and ‘it’s ok for widows to remarry’. The other widows can’t take it when the angel in their midst, the beautiful Kalyani, decides to remarry tall dark and handsome Narayan. As the plot unfolds, we find out that Kalyani has already met her future father-in-law, but between the sheets, earning money to keep the house for widows going. Augh! Shamed and afraid that she can’t marry with honor, she drowns herself in the Ganges River.

Shakuntala saves Chuyia by sending her with Narayan to live and learn with Gandhi. Shakuntala transforms in this film, initially schooling Chuyia on how to behave like a good widow, to questioning the rules to which they must adhere, to saving Chuyia from a certain fate of being a child call-girl.

So many things were frustrating in their conditions, such as the fact that there was a LAW that said widows may remarry, but under the guise of religion were shuffled to the home so there could be no property disputes, but it was especially frustrating to see that widows in India, numbering 34 million in 2001, still endure “social, economic, and cultural deprivation”. I thought it surely must have ended or slowed down after Gandhi. It’s simply an utter disgrace.
This film was protested in India after two days of production, and had to be shelved, removed and recast. I’m glad it finally was made.

Roger Ebert says he would have been content if the film had shown only Chuyia’s story, I believe that it is fuller for showing Kalyani and Narayan’s frustrated love affair. The taboo of their love heightens the awareness that they shouldn’t even be seen together. This tension increases the dramatic irony that if this were happening in the West, it would be a simple love story, and Chuyia’s story would be non-existent, or if it were happening, then several adults would be in jail and she would be in therapy.

I absolutely loved this film.