Condemnation of the past includes music, comedy & romance?
The more things change the more they stay the same – just ask veteran filmmaker Deepa Mehta about the risks and difficulties of creating a film when fundamentalists are willing to do more than sabotage the film’s production. Just one of the many places in a world where women are treated as 2nd class citizens and where democracy is lagging behind other nations, Mehta’s beloved India is yet again the heart and subject matter for another controversial film. Despite the insertion of an idealist falling in love scenario and an absence of a deeper sense of melancholy, Water is perhaps Mehta’s best kiss off to her deeply personal elemental trilogy of films.
Using a soft-spoken rebellion and loaded with a practical symbolism, the plot keeps to an agenda which doesn’t condemn as much as it highlights the social injustices that took place back in the 30’s colonial India. This time out, Mehta emphasizes the struggle of being prosecuted for belonging to the ‘wrong’ gender – with minor acts of defiance and courage coming from many of the film’s protagonists. It’s perhaps the film’s p.o.v from a brave-faced 8 year-old girl (Sarala) that seizes the viewer’s sympathy and not the beautiful love song characters that gorgeous actors Lisa Ray and John Abraham portray.
Lush locations and a well-suited pacing are the film’s strongest points but the psychological shifting are limited to moments that awkwardly position the film. There is a subtle, yet overlapping presence of the Bollywood tradition which caresses the picture with music, song or visual poetry thus making the aspired deafening condemning punch (which is included in a film such as Monsoon Wedding) into a very soft blow. The tone matches that of the philosophy that the great Gandhi – a bigger than life figure who unceremoniously makes a pit stop in the final stretch of the narrative – something that Mehta could have avoided yet applies to the text because it follows the silent act of rebellion.
Mehta’s strong voice is also a simplified one, the free India from its political unfairness, free the people from discrimination and free the misfortunate widows from a life of misery mantra lacks firepower. A potentially emotionally overpowering film takes a fundamental view on fundamentalism – Water starts out as a fire, a small, controlled one that eventually gets dosed by the very element that is so lucid throughout the film.
