Water Review

"Water" reviews

Movie

Water

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2007-05-29 09:44:25

Provider

MRIB

Review

Deepa Mehta's Trilogy of the Elements, which began with Fire, was followed by Earth and now moves onto Water, is a well observed tale about the suffering of widows in Indian culture.

Traditional beliefs hold that when a husband dies, part of the woman dies with him. Set in 1930s India, when the vast country was still a reluctant part of the British Empire, it's centred on a home where widowed women are supposed to reside to avoid being a burden on their family and to exorcise themselves of bad karma. The home is run by a dope-smoking Madam, Manorama, who pimps them out on the side, with the help of the transvestite Gulabi (Raghuvir Yadav).

The protagonist and catalyst for change is Narayan (John Abraham), an early follower of Ghandi and a believer in liberalism and progression, without the shackles of the Indian caste system. He falls for Kalyani (Lisa Ray), and promptly proposes marriage to her. Manorama is outraged at this threat to her dominance and warns Kalyani to accept is to live in eternal damnation.

Mehta judges the tone of the film expertly, and though there are a few too many of those shots of nature at work that are deemed essential in non-Hollywood movies, the pacing sees this riveting story unfold at an entertaining pace, spiced up by the occasional Bollywood-style musical number.

Copyright © MRIB 2007.