Movies: The weight of Water
On the surface it’s pretty, but ideas run Deepa
Reviewed by Dylan Ferguson
Photo by Davyani Saltzman.
Water
Directed by Deepa Mehta
Now Playing
3.5 / 5
Beware all ye filmmakers who navigate ethical waters. Here there be dragons.
Not only can the production or subject matter of a film be controversial, but even the stylistic choices a director makes can be picked apart from the perpetually-sinister standpoint of ethics. “Tracking shots,” the endlessly-quotable Jean-Luc Godard once remarked, “are a question of morality.”
So I begin my review of Water, a film whose production was the scene of a moral and ethical battle so dramatic it threatens to overshadow the events in the actual movie. Apparently, people who took issue with the anti-tradition stance of Deepa Mehta’s Indian-Canadian production (in Hindi, with English subtitles) were so enraged that they burnt down sets and staged suicide attempts, effectively shutting down the film’s Indian shoot.
The subject matter of the film, and a lovely film it is, hardly seem to justify such behaviour, at least from a Western standpoint. Who would take issue with a work of art that condemns misogyny and hails Gandhism? I am not Indian, so I will not try to answer that question.
The heroine of Water is a seven-year-old girl named Chuyia, who is living in 1938 India. We are introduced to her through the following exchange she shares with her father:
Father: “Remember when you were married?”
Chuyia: “No.”
Father: “Your husband’s dead. You’re a widow now.”
So, in accordance with certain Indian traditions, which state that widows are only “half-alive,” little Chuyia has her head shaved and is sent to a shelter for widows, where she is to be shunned by the rest of society for the remainder of her life.
In the shelter, Chuyia befriends a gorgeous young woman named Kalyani, who has been forced into prostitution to help fund the establishment. One day, Kalyani meets Narayana, who is a gentleman, a Ghandhist and a Byron-quoting romantic. The two want to get married, though they must challenge Indian tradition to do so. Narayana believes in some tradition, but dismisses the cultural treatment of women as a notion “disguised as tradition, but it’s just about money.”
The anti-tradition argument of the movie is handled well. It is not a preachy message, but a question of necessity for the characters. I also like the way Gandhi appears in the story. He’s like a whispered-about spectre that hangs over every conversation, a distant beacon of hope in change.
Most of the film takes place in the widow’s shelter, and it is truly an original and interesting setting. This and the fact that we’re dealing with a facet of life never before seen in a movie are Water’s greatest strengths.
Mehta uses a capital-D “Drama” style that can inspire the critic-friendly adjectives “clunky” and “dull” just as easily as “powerful” and “touching.” Water is more kinetic and exciting than some of Mehta’s previous work, but it is doused in her characteristic affinity for romance.
Almost everything from the postcard-ready mise-en-scène to the obvious dialogue are so romantic, I doubt anyone was surprised when Narayana began quoting Romeo and Juliet.
Though sound in its thematic ethics, Water’s rampant romanticism runs afoul of “stylistic ethics,” if you’ll permit me to use such a term. Paradoxical though it may sound, presenting a story in a very sympathetic style can make a film seem less sympathetic towards its characters. Realism is often preferable to provoke compassion, because it shows us the world as it is: unsympathetic to the individuals within it. This is why the Catholic Church praised Italian neorealist films for their “Franciscan” humanism — the straight-forward approaches of Vittorio DeSica and Roberto Rossellini felt undeniably more compassionate in their portrayals of downtrodden characters than “dressed-up” movies did.
Water is a fine romance, but its romantic inclination seems almost inappropriate for the bleak subject matter. This is more of an observation than a serious complaint, I suppose, but people do take questions of ethics, even cinematic ethics, very seriously, though I don’t imagine we’ll see suicide attempts in retaliation to tracking shots anytime soon.
