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Water February 13, 2007 |
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Recently released on DVD and nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar, “Water” is the third in a non-linked elemental trilogy from Indian director Deepa Mehta, following 1996’s “Fire” and 1998’s “Earth”. This gorgeously shot drama takes place in Varanasi, India in 1938 on the eve of Ghandi’s rise to power, where Indian widows live a life of poverty in locked-down ashrams and are forbidden, unless in the rarest of cases, to remarry after their husbands have died, a strictly adhered ancient rule that Ghandi and his liberal followers hope to eradicate. Of focus here are Chuyia (Sarala), an eight year old girl who is told that a man she’s never met, her husband, has died and that she’s to be taken to an ashram to live the rest of her life in mourning, and Kalyani (Lisa Ray), a beautiful young woman who had a similar arranged marriage end in death when she was Chuyia’s age, but now has an admirer in the rich outsider Narayan (John Abraham) and wishes to break the stolid customs and marry into his family. Of course in countries with ancient rules like this, where women are treated less like free thinking civilians and more like an appendage to their husband’s existence, there are terrible complications, as we come to hope that in the new age of enlightenment that Ghandi is promising, little Chuyia won’t have to live the repressed life Kalyani and her kind have lived for centuries. Mehta had trouble getting this film made, when an original attempt in India was sabotaged by radicals who thought the film was anti-Hindu, but luckily years later she was able to make it, with Sri Lanka subbing for India, and with the popular and strikingly beautiful Lisa Ray as Kalyani, and the fact that it was shown world-wide, made a good showing at theaters (for a foreign film), and is nominated for an Oscar, has got to be great satisfaction for Mehta, an extremely talented and important director. by Adam Suraf
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