The beautiful new film Water by director Deepa Mehta is a powerful one, so powerful that mobs of fundamentalist Hindus mobbed her film sets and torched them. Four long years later she started filming again, this time with a different cast in Sri Lanka, far from her previous location in India and the Ganges River.
The film, set in 1938 tells the story of a young girl who is married off at pre-school age yet still lives with her parents. When she’s a few years older her husband dies making her a widow before she has even met him. When this happens in this society she is sent to a house for widows where she is expected to live the rest of her life away from society. According to old Hindu law a woman is ‘half dead’ when her husband dies and is segregated so as not to ‘pollute’ society. In many places in rural India this practice still exists today. In a NY Times article:
The film has provoked far more than that. In January 2000 Ms. Mehta was forced to shut down production of “Water” in Varanasi, one of India’s holy cities on the banks of the Ganges, after Hindu nationalists protested that the film was anti-Hindu. Some 500 demonstrators took to the streets, ransacked the set and burned Ms. Mehta in effigy. She appealed to the state government for help, but fearing more violence, local officials asked the film crew to leave.
Today there are about 33 million widows in India, according to the 2001 census, and many in the rural areas are still treated like the outcasts in the film.
I can’t stress how beautifully made this film is, the images are intoxicating. The stories of the women are moving and the film has lovely humor and moments of intense beauty and humanity as well as a sense of deep pain in places. Here is an example of film sweeping you away to an exotic time and place that has real relevance to everyone’s life. Cheers to Ms. Meehta for an exquisite film.
I had heard briefly about this film. As a result of your description, I’ve made up my mind to see it.
The film just opened in NY, LA and SFO last Friday but will be rolling out to other cities later this month.
The images in the film are still so vivid in my mind.
First I’ve heard of this movie – it sounds sad and beautiful and I hope to see it when it comes to town. Thanks for the review.
I did not know about this practice. It is so wrong to ostracize someone for something they have no control over whatsoever. Strike up another brutal practice to some antiquated religion. Thank you for bringing this movie to our attention here.
It is indeed heartbreaking to see both things, another example of religion persecuting people (mixed with religion’s superstition element) and the way all cultures subjugate women.
The cool thing that I didn’t mention in the review is that the whole film is juxtaposed with Ghandi’s rise to prominence which works beautifully here.
Wow, now I’ve got to try to see it. It probably won’t make it to a theatre near me (in Mississippi we never get the good films, just the drivel), but if I can catch in Memphis I will.