Cast- Seema Biswas, Lisa Ray, John Abraham, Sarala, Raghubir Yadav
Writer/Director- Deepa Mehta.
Music- A.R.Rahman
Basic Premise of Water-
“According to the Dharmashastra (Hindu religious scriptures) written by Manu nearly 2000 years ago, Hindu women who are widowed have only two options available to them. They can either die as Sati with their husbands, or live the remainder of their lives in isolated, self-denial”
The movie starts with this message written across the screen. A powerful premise indeed…nobody can deny the truth of this in India, or the resulting ex-communication of widows from society, living a life of extreme poverty. Our history books tell us about Raja RamMohan Roy and other Hindu reformists, in the late 19th, early 20th century, who fought very hard to improve the plight of widows and were successful to a large extent. However, inhuman treatment of widows is an evil that still exists in our society, and IS an issue that needs to be highlighted. Does “Water” do justice to this very real problem?
PLOT- Time period- 1938. Place- Some city along the bank of the Ganges river. Chuiya (Sarala), an 8 year old, feisty little girl is recently widowed. She is taken by her father to an ashram (shelter) for widows and left there. The ashram consists of widows who have been living there ever since they lost their husbands. These women have to shave their heads, wear white clothes, eat only one meal a day, and in order to sustain themselves, have to beg for money. Chuiya doesn’t quite understand why she is there and why she cant go home, getting into a fight with the head of the ashram, “Moti Madhu” (as Chuiya calls her), as soon as she gets there.
Chuiya is soon taken under the wings of Shakuntala (Seema Biswas), an older widow who lives a life of religious piety, but has a soft spot for Chuiya. Chuiya also befriends Kalyani (Lisa Ray), a young, beautiful widow, who is allowed to keep her hair because she has been forced into prostitution by Madhu, the head of the ashram. Madhu, with the help of Gulabi, a eunuch (Raghubir Yadav), sends young widows to rich clientele in order to financially support the ashram. Despite this, Kalyani appears to be quite sanguine and optimistic, and is the only one young enough to understand Chuiya’s energy and spirit.
Into this situation walks in Narayan (John Abraham), a young, educated, Gandhian Nationalist, from a privileged background. He happens to come across Kalyani and falls in love with her. Narayan wants her to leave the ashram and marry him. With the support of Shakuntala and Chuiya, against the wishes of the Madhu, Kalyani does leave the ashram to go away with Narayan. However, she chooses to return when she finds out that Narayan’s father was one of her “clients”. Faced with a return to widowhood and a life of prostitution, Kalyani kills herself.
Narayan is devastated, as he still wanted to marry her. With Kalyani dead, Madhu now sends Chuiya with Gulabi to a client, on the pretext of sending her home to her parents. This is more than Shakuntala can bear, and as soon as Gulabi comes back with a broken Chuiya, she decides to take Chuiya away from the Ashram and a life of prostitution. Shakuntala is influenced by a discourse by Gandhiji, and hands Chuiya over to Narayan, in order to be given shelter by Gandhiji.
MY TAKE- As you can see from the plot I’ve described, “Water” is based on a powerful story, one that deserved to be told well. As most of you probably know, “Water” was going to be made a number of years ago, and was being shot on the banks of the holy city of Varanasi, with Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das in the lead. The cast and crew faced a number of problems from Hindu fundamentalist organisations, due to the controversial nature of the subject, and the movie had to be abandoned. Deepa Mehta decided to go ahead with the movie a few years later, with an entirely different cast, with the shooting taking place outside India, in Sri Lanka. I’m not sure whether it is because of the change in cast and location, but this particular version of “Water” does not live up to its hype.
With the exception of Seema Biswas, the other members of the main cast- Lisa Ray, John Abraham, and even Sarala (the child artist), do not fit the bill. Both Lisa and John are handicapped by the fact that they look too glamorous to play the parts they are supposed to enact. Sarala is a cute, vivacious child, originally from Sri Lanka. She is given a slew of heavy hindi dialogue, which doesn’t sit well on her tongue, or on the fact that she is only a child.
The main flaw in the movie though, is not so much the misplaced casting, but the extremely poor writing, direction, and editing. The dialogues are terrible and the Hindi used seems more appropriate to present day Mumbai, than that spoken by Brahmin widows in early 20th century. While you get the sense of the terrible plight of the widows, it seems that is all the director wanted to portray. None of the characters are properly fleshed out and they are all very one-dimensional. You long for the camera to rest on a face long enough to read the emotions there, to empathise with the characters….but that just doesn’t happen. The director hits you on the head with the notion of the injustice of widowhood throughout the movie, with dialogues like “Mardon waala vidhwa ashram kahaan hai” coming from the mouth of Chuiya, with a chorus of “Hai, Hai, yeh kya keh diya” around her. There is nothing subtle about this movie, nor is there a sense of irony that is so important when making a film about a serious social issue.
The one thing that is unquestionably beautiful is the music....haunting soundtrack by AR Rahman. The songs werent well placed in the movie, but they help a lot in creating and maintaining the sombre mood of the movie.
“Water”was the opening film at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) this year, which is a matter of great honour for any film or film-maker. However, were it not for the controversial subject matter, I don’t think “Water” would have been singled out for any critical acclaim.