Water Is Filled With Heart - From Fall 2006

Water – September or October 2006

Review originally published in SBU’s The Stony Brook Press

(Updated and additional notes are further below.)

"Water is an impressive work of art. It is a story that touches upon a variety of issues, concerns, and emotions. It questions the treatment of India's widows: past, present, and future. When a husband dies the wife has one of three options. The most likely to be selected (*the hope is at least) is to live in a Widows House and there she will remain unmarried, to wear white linen robes, and keep a shaved head. Their lives are spent mourning their loss.

The web group of characters and their relationships are set against the year 1938 as Mahatma Gandhi passively resists British imperial rule. Chuyia, a child widow, was left by her parents to live with other much older widows in the holy city of Baranasi. It is heartbreaking to watch her take the time for her to understand she is there to stay. Kalyani is a young woman who has been widowed since her childhood but has been a prostitute to the men of the city as a way of bringing money into the Widows House and thus allowed to keep her hair. The older widows of the House are representative of the women who have lived out the lives in which Chuyia and Kalyani are to continue on. When Kalyani meets Narayan (a handsome recent law school graduate), she begins to wonder if love and marriage are still possible for her to experience. Though a law exists legalizing widows to remarry it is still very much abhorred and it is this that stirs conflict when it is known Narayan would like to marry Kalyani. It is their romance that provides a hope for Chuyia (and other very young widows') futures while also taking away the meaning of what widows have experienced for centuries before.

Water is filled with heart. It is evident that not only the director and writer Deepa Mehta has worked very hard and with great passion to complete this film to its greatest potential but also that of the producer, the cinematographer, the art director, the music director, and the actors. The colors in every shot are balanced and easy to take in. The music is expressive and enjoyable to listen to. The performances of worthy of much praise and portray their characters with understanding and hope. This film falls under the genre of drama but is more of a commentary on the role of women in India, childhood, tradition, marriage, and personal ways of thinking within a society's culture. Underneath this already complex story is the symbolism Deepa Mehta has made clear. Here water represents cleansing, renewal, purity, life, simplicity, and punishment. This film is for the viewer that wants to see something brilliant and different. (*The rest of the review was an attempt at throwing-shade at Deepa Mehta's other recent movie Bollywood Hollywood, due to how bad that was as well as because of the Stony Brook Press' lean towards satire. I deleted it because my attempt was terrible.)

Updates from 2021:

This was a beautiful film to watch and one of the first screenings I attended at Stony Brook's The Staller Center. I was captivated by every element in its entirety of running time. 

                                                                        

Trailer for Water (2005)

I had always been a fan of Bollywood cinema and soundtracks, but this was the first one of them I had been truly moved by. I'd later realize it followed the more dramatic narrative in the vein of Satyajit Ray than the musical-action spectacles. The depiction of the characters' lives were so authentic, the cinematography of balancing color with setting, and of course A.R. Rahman's music left me in tears of mixed emotions. 

While I think Chuyia's wedding to an older man had been shown at the story's beginning, I don't believe they had a scene or even intimated its consummation (aka what would also be considered the statutory rape of a child (because instead Chuyia's first experience forced into prostitution towards the end had left her psychologically and physically traumatized). The story instead focuses on her initial incomprehension of being a widow, reluctance to accept her new home and circumstances, and then her acclimation to the life of widowhood among the other women in the ashram. Given that the other choices her parents could have chosen for her of either instead marrying the husband's brother (which he may not have had) or for her to burn alongside him on the pyre, the Widows House of poverty and religious observance of mourning was the lesser of allowed paths/evils. 

The film also especially tells the love story between Kalyani and Narayam. Theirs is a tale of how tradition clashes with a modern movement. Not just as Gandhi's rise of influence was going to breakdown the British Empire's hold of colonialism, but society's religion and philosophy itself. That widows of any age have only one of three choices and have to endure what is still beyond their control is the crux of what stands between them. Kalyani's growing up as a young bride and widowhood of  forced prostitution created a dichotomy of guilt for her past sins and hope for a loving future with Narayam. But it is the former which ultimately prevents her from the latter. Narayam's choice for a love marriage (with a widow and prostitute) is extremely bold and courageous against that of what his parents would have wanted for him (an arranged marriage based upon the ancient caste system).

At the end, though all of the characters are left traumatized, Narayam's effectual adoption of Chuyia means an escape to the future of possibility. As the film was based upon a novel, I am interested to know if the story continued to Chuyia's future as a young woman of India in the 1950s and 60s.

Water was highly acclaimed the world over, and unfortunately lost the Oscar for Foreign Film to Germany's The Lives of Others.