“Water”, 2005. Written and directed by Deepa Mehta; music by Mychael Danna and the famous (and unbelievably prolific) A.R. Rahman. Starring Sarala, Lisa Ray, Seema Biswas, John Abraham, Manorama, Raghuveer Yadav, Vidula Javalgekar, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, and Bollywood stalwart Waheeda Rehman (in a small role).
Now showing at the Uptown Theater.
Once upon a time, in 1937, a young child named Chuyia rides on the back of a horse-drawn cart, indifferent to the world around her, absorbed in devouring a banana. A man lies next to her, riddled with fever, sweating, attended by a pair of women. Eventually this poor fellow dies of his illness. As night falls, Chuyia is brought to the edge of the great Ganges River and her hair is shorn, she is dressed in a flowing white robe, and brought to an ashram by her father. Though all of eight years old, Chuyia is expected to spend the rest of her life mourning the dead man, who was her husband. So begins the incredible story of Water.
Here we are at the dawn of the summer blockbuster season, where Mission: Impossible competes with Poseidon which competes with Da Vinci Code which itself will fight the new Pixar film Cars and the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel (which is no match for the lovely Burt Lancaster vehicle The Crimson Pirate), and the list goes on and on and on. And yet, tucked modestly away for a pair of weeks (at most) at the enormous Uptown Theater, Deepa Mehta’s Water outshines them all. How could it not? The story of these widows, forced by society to mourn for eternity is the stuff of Dickens, of Mafouz, the clay of the greatest storytellers in history. That it has come to us after six long years of battle, banned in its home country and recast with a young girl who can’t even speak the language it’s written in, makes it that much more remarkable.
The facts: Chuyia (played by Sarala, a wonderful actress we’ll probably never see again) begins her stay in the creaky ashram rebelling against the rules that she cannot comprehend. She scurries about fighting against the other widows, all of whom, for the most part, have given up any hope in their lives. There’s the head widow Madhumati (played by Manorma) who is addicted to ganja and loafs in her bed, a humble and devout widow named Shakuntula (Seema Biswas), and a gorgeous young woman who the ashram rents out as a prostitute to ease their financial burdens. This girl, Kalyani (Lisa Ray) is the center of the story. She will fall in love with a young man Narayan (John Abraham), a follower of Gandhi who does not care that Kalyani is a widow.
First of all, you can’t keep your eye off this assembly of women–each one of the aforementioned actresses sank their teeth deep into these roles, filling even the worst character–Madhumati–with pathos and humor. The supporting characters, including a poor old woman named “Auntie” (Vidula Javalgekar) is equally wonderful, spinning tales of her childhood wedding over and over, licking her lips at the sweets she remembers enjoying decades back. There’s the gossiping Gulabi (Raghuvir Yadav), a hermaphrodite who also helps ferry the unfortunate Kalyani to the Brahmins across the Ganges and is good friends with the corrupt Madhumati. Many of these characters are cruel, but it is to Mehta’s considerable credit that they are never caricatures, and are often given scenes of great pity.
Water is not a musical, in spite of pedigree of the songwriters (Rahman is one of the masters of the Bollywood musical, with over a hundred movies to his credit), at times simply slipping into a snappy tune that plays over a plot-advancing montage. The film chronicles, somewhat clumsily, the rise of Gandhi, and its not entirely clear how he would rid India of ashrams, especially since they exist to this day. But the romance, Chuyia’s struggles, and the spiritual conflict Shakuntula engages in makes for one hell of a fascinating–and entertaining–picture.
Amazingly, Water raised the volcanic ire of fundamentalist Hindis, who destroyed sets and threatened the cast and crew with violence, so much so the film was cancelled in 2000. Surreptitiously, Mehta moved the production to Sri Lanka (from the original site of Varanasi) years later, and recast the film. For Chuyia, they discovered the young Sarala, who couldn’t speak Hindi or English and had to work with the crew via sign language. One conservative legislator has claimed that he would allow Water to come to India over his dead body.
That jerk isn’t dead, and since the bright folks at the Academy leave the nominations of Best Foreign Film to each country, Water hasn’t a chance to win that Oscar, though it’s a perfect candidate. I suppose it doesn’t matter, though it’s always nice to see a deserving film get a spike in rentals thanks to the auspices of our Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
But I digress: Water is worth seeing, by God, if only because it’s a film that seeks to tell a story, a great story that has significant meaning, tells it well, and is filled with beautiful performances, with good music, and is directed with flair and an eye for all these elements. A note to the Muckity-Mucks who run the dream factory: if you’re having difficulty finding stories, finding directors and actors, look to the East. Between Water and the films at the Walker’s Global Film Initiative, you’ve got a dozen titles that put our output to shame. At the dawn of our own industry, we imported our filmmakers from Europe: Hitchcock, Lang, Billy Wilder, Lubitsch, to name but a few. Water is a great film, a movie with considerable meaning, that doesn’t wreck its story with its earnestness, nor ruin subtle performances with a heavy-handed script. Like the best classics, it is in the grandest Hollywood tradition, and if it had been American, everyone would see it.
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