To give you an idea how welcome a one-time-only screening of Water was for those of us who were lucky enough to see it, I will list some of the titles that were also currently playing at the idiotic Empire 10 complex in Saint John: Date Movie, Madea's Family Reunion, Eight Below and The Pink Panther. Individually, these movies are unassuming, but combined these bland February releases wedge out the possibility of anything of better quality coming to our backwards little city. True, next to these cinematic turdes just about any other film would seem like a bona fide classic, but Water holds its own, regardless of when or where it was released, period. It's a remakable motion picture.
The film is produced in Canada, and considering its content specifically targets Indian culture and tradition over the last century, it would be interesting to find out how much help the filmmakers had, generally. After all, it was shot in Sri Lanka and not India, as one might think. One must assume this is about as controversial a decision as can be conceived, given how the native country, rampant with poverty, could ostensibly have benefitted from a movie shoot on location and all the business opportunities that could have gone with it.
Lisa Ray stars as Kalyani, a widow in accordance to Indian scripture. We find out she has been betrothed at a very young age and after her husband died -- a husband she never even met -- she must spend the remainder of her life in an ashram, an outcast who is prostituted by the elder widow inhabitants to pay the rent. One day, Kalyani meets Narayana (John Abraham) and falls in love, but the pair must fight through the enormous obstacle of custom, weighing down their ability to be happy together.
However, Water's story is not exactly theirs, necessarily. We meet Shakuntala (Seema Biswas), another widow from the ashram of profound faith who attempts to reconcile thousands of years of tradition with the teachings of a new radical, Mahatma Gandhi. We are also introduced to Chuyia (Sarala), a precocious 8 year-old who has just arrived at the ashram and may be doomed to follow the fate of the other widows unless something is changed soon.
The title substance, water, is prevalent in many scenes. In some instances, it serves as a cleansing substance in which to bathe. In others, it is revered as a holy thing, and in others it is a means of transportation by means of which different characters address their fates head on. In fact, Water is actually the third in a trilogy of movies based on the elements, the other two being Earth and Fire.
Writer/director Deepa Mehta shoots with confidence and studied patience. Her passion for the volatile source material is apparent not just in her moving screenplay, which kind of creeps up on you and then keeps building momentum, but in the brave performances she extracts from her marvellous cast of unknowns. Each not only uncannily looks their role, but brings an urgent authenticity to their characters that might not have been achieved, if she'd used performers with more experience. They tackle the touchy subject of India's caste system with unpolished, heartfelt honesty.
Like Crash from last year, Water is not only entertaining, but it is about something. It wants to stimulate discussion and the sharing of ideas, even if the viewer has little knowledge of this (ongoing) chapter of India's history. Water questions the merit of blindly following a custom and a cultural norm if the principle reason for its existence could possibly be that it has simply always been a tradition and has never been confronted. If, as it states in the closing credits, there are 34 million widows currently in India, perhaps the history of the past remains a living history in the here and now, and it is here where a movie of this scope and sensitivity may play a larger, even more important role in the years to come.
