Rounding out the couplet of Oscar nominated foreign films at the top of my Netflix queue, I watched Water instantly at some point this past week. I had never been exposed to Deepa Mehta's films before, so I know nothing of her elemental trilogy or prior body of work. In fact, my radar detected this film because of its Oscar exposure; admittedly, I'm one of those people who tend to need something like the Oscars to expose me to some foreign films and their makers, but they usually lead me on a trail depending upon how much I liked them. Actually, I think this film lost to Tsotsi...but I digress. I liked Water, but I didn't love it, and I'm not sure whether I'll continue to scout out Mehta's films because of it; maybe someone can give me their opinion of some of her other films after I explain why this one didn't make me a curious acolyte.
Water tells the story of a young girl in India named Chuyia (Sarala) sent to live in an ashram or home for widows. Apparently, some orthodox Hindus, particularly in times contemporary to the British colonial occupation of the country, arranged to marry daughters particularly young. If the young wife's husband passed away, the widow was expected to spend her life in the company of other widows in an ashram, to atone for her sins (which, it was believed, caused her husband's untimely death) and to cleanse her karma. Chuyia is only 8 years old and, therefore, doesn't understand her new life, always expecting her mother to come for her. She clashes heavily with the older, heavy woman who presides over the ashram, known as Didi, which I think is some sort of Hindi word equivalent to matriarch or head of household. Didi, equally resentful of her station, hordes the house food, is well supplied in gangi and gossip by a local eunuch and transvestite, and prostitutes another ashram resident, Kalyani (Lisa Ray), for money for the house and herself. Chuyia takes kindly to Kalyani, who, despite her pious spirit, finds ways to defy house rules and cope with her situation. One day, while Chuyia chases down Kalyani's contraband puppy with Kalyani in tow, a young lawyer and Gandhi loyalist, Narayan, espies her and seemingly, at first sight, falls in love with her. His Gandhian ideals, encouraged by abandonment of some of the traditional rules and laws supported by the British, and his passion for Kalyani, inspire him to defy tradition and seek to marry her, much to the chagrin of the Didis at the ashram, including another pious woman who works as much to protect Chuyia and Kalyani as to observe the tenets of her faith. Chuyia watches as several events unfold around her, losing some of her childhood innocence while embodying the hallmark of the social commentary underlying this piece.
For me, Water presented two different sides to the viewing experience. First, there was the cultural picture being painted, discussing how the ashrams and the religious tenets resulting in their existence fit into the larger context of Indian society as a whole, complete with presenting elements of everyday life and the historical environment. Second, there was the social commentary piece of it, dissecting the cultural picture and offering judgments and, therefore, a message about the treatment of widows by Indian society.
The film was beautifully shot, using on-location surrounds in, apparently, Sri Lanka to present two worlds divided by a river (where the title seems to originate): the side of the village and the shunned ashram and the side of the gentrified citizen who seems to be allured by the forbidden and taboo nature of associating with the widows. The film was also beautifully scored, incorporating songs and instrumental pieces with traditional foundations to accentuate the events on screen. The performances were, further, very moving; Sarala, as young Chuyia, was very natural, but the best performance belonged to Seema Biswas, whose Didi character (the younger, protective one) becomes the heroine of the story, as she grapples with the devotion to her faith and the conscience behind her social position.
I didn't love this movie, however, because of two main reasons. First, some of the story felt contrived to me, at least as it related to the romance between Kalyani and Narayan. The forbidden love convention to particularly emphasize the unfairness of widows' stations in life felt like too much - like the overly sweet dessert after an already full and large meal. As depicted, anyone without a heart of stone could see that widows' lives were hard, and their stations unfair, if your religious beliefs don't coincide with those who endorse that way of life. It was difficult for me to suspend my disbelief, however, as I watched the instant attraction and trite courtship between Kalyani and Narayan, giving rise to a whirlwind marriage proposal and propelling the plot toward a situation that compromised Chuyia's innocence, and contrary to All Movie Guide's assertions, did not really end in a satisfying way, unless the fact that it ended at all was supposed to be the satisfying part of it. It just felt unnatural and distracted from the true keystone characters of Chuyia and her protective Didi.
Second, because the film was clearly meant as a message movie, to expose the world to the existence of ashrams, which are still prevalent today, I felt the heavy-handedness of it all. I think Mehta tried to film this as a docudrama, even though the story at its core drifted from the wedged-in romance to the historical context revolving around Gandhi. In other words, it felt like the fictional story was being passed off as real, to shed light on the larger social context, but it wasn't real, not really. This approach alienated me a bit from the film and prevented me from really loving it.
Is it a flaw of the movie itself to blend fact and fiction and to try to make a social argument? No, but I think it blurred Mehta's focus a bit and made the film more convoluted than it needed to be. Sarala's Chuyia is the reason to watch the film - in the big picture, she's married without her knowledge and sent away from her family without understanding why to live a life that no one else would choose, only to be shunned by society. Yet, because of the romance component and Mehta's drive to show the viewer just how bad things can be, Chuyia stopped being the focus for much of the movie, at least during the middle third. Especially with the romance, Chuyia's perspective was lost in the shuffle of Narayan's character bouncing back and forth between decrying some Indian traditions according to Gandhi's teachings, chastizing his father for whoring with widows, and laughing at his mother when she wants Narayan to have a traditional wife paralleled with Kalyani's struggle between her feelings of love and her piety toward her faith. I guess, to put it a slightly more articulate way, the movie was complicated and multi-layered and presented a message, which is good, but the message perhaps had too many layers. The movie could have been more effective and even more touching if the viewer never lost Chuyia's perspective before picking it up again prior to the tragic loss of her innocence toward the end of the film.
Yet, Water still moved and still had some very good points because the performances were compelling and the audio and visual elements were pleasant to experience. In fact, this is a great cultural immersion movie because Mehta spent a lot of celluloid contrasting traditional cultural norms under British occupation with the infusion of Gandhism. Still, I feel the movie should be rated a 7 for having more than simply minor flaws in the story and, thus, for being shaky but entertaining. Also, I don't suspect that it passes the test. I was moved by the story revolving around Chuyia but not enough to want to watch it at a whim; Water's sophisticated and deep on one hand but, on the other hand, is too draining to watch repeatedly.