Analytical Review of the Movie Water Directed by Deepa Mehta
I have chosen to provide an analysis of Deepa Mehta’s Water as it is established as a transnational film through its combination of Indian and Canadian filmmaking and qualities. The film premiered at Toronto International Film Festival. Focus will be placed on production, reception and contextual analysis.
The film is set in British-occupied India, 1938. Not only is the style Canadian but it highlights the social and religious pressures of women in South Asia that have led to them fleeing to libertarian countries like Canada. The opportunities that Canada offers is liberating compared to other undeveloped countries like India, which is mirrored by Mehta’s success in Canada as a filmmaker and with this film. This film is still relevant today as it explores deeper emotional and cultural issues within the Indo-Canadian community. The opportunity of gender equality, opportunities and free-will was some of the many reasons many Indians immigrated to Canada.
Mehta’s style of filmmaking also evokes a sense of isolation that some immigrants feel when leaving a land of familiarity for Western dreams. Mehta’s film is a transnational one. She explores beyond national boundaries and is open to all. This is why a film like this is successful in Canada, as those who inhabit the country are from all over the world. Behind the scenes of water, Mehta stated that “In each of my films, it’s important to show that problems that stem from sexual orientation or violence have no international barriers. We try to show that these are universal problems that affect everybody”. Her intentions were certainly to attract and appeal to a large audience. The transnational has a focus on a personal and intimate level around the world; connecting people from different countries and cultures. Transnationalism therefore has socio-political and socio-economic impacts that affect people globally. Many immigrants see films through what they would call the diasporic gaze.
Many “transnational productions emerge from within a specifically diasporic configuration that...articulates the relationship between the host and home cultures, and is aware, at same time, of the interconnectedness between the local and the global within diasporic communities”.
The art-house style of the film remains a hybrid cultural one. Mehta has combined both Canadian and Indian elements of filmmaking and in doing so creates an eclectic film style. The film’s visual aesthetic style is pleasing in its colour palette of soft blues and greys, is far too addicted to prettiness to capture the feel of a real Indian city. A series of Bollywood songs break up the dramatic tension, without even supplying the usual elements of spectacle and movement. The scripting of character is so Bollywood-thin that it borders on being cartoonish. The film as a whole remains a Bollywood romance with pretensions of political profundity, transfigured from time to time by the two supporting actors; Lisa Ray and John Abraham.
Mehta’s Water examines the marginalisation of forgotten Hindu widows trying to survive in conditions of extreme poverty and misery. The film shows the director's courage in the face of the intimidation of the patriarchal forces who tried to put her in the wheel. The fact that Mehta was able to produce his film in such circumstances confirms her intrepid nature and her tenacious love of the craft. In a Canadian craft, Water presents unforgettable images composed with sensitivity and subtlety to create beauty and emotion. The mute pain of the Hindu widows, represented by striking images, engages the viewer in a dialectical exchange.
Through a careful look at Mehta's Water, seems to elucidate the way in which the director manages to create a film with meaning and an extremely important social text. Treatment of Hindu women widowed women is atrocious, yet it is the social norm in some parts of India. Quasi-religious traditions, but more of the culture, not in fact religious at all. The barbarity of life in India can be seen by the opening scenes. The vulgar and violent cutting of the child’s hair, with no care or sympathy at all. The relationships between parents and children are extremely hostile, and even anti-familial. The little girl is also drugged and raped. Tutun Mukherjee explicates that the film “represents in its totality a powerful and significant cultural challenge to the dominating masculine values and practices of oppression, subjugation, and exploitation of women”, which is explicitly shown in the film. Many critics like Mukherjee have this same stance. The resistance of patriarchal norms is an unspoken subtext, a very sensitive political issue in India.
Many sensitive political issues are brutally exposed in the film from the very beginning. “The film is set in the 1930s and is about the politics of religion and its impact on ordinary people…” – Deepa Mehta. This is similar to Jim Leach’s chapter on “Between Yesterday and Tomorrow: Mon Oncle Antoine”. He believes that that religion is imperative to the narrative within the film. The cultural awareness was prominent. Even Jutra stated that he remained faithful to his "sociological and cultural reality" within Mon Oncle Antoine. Perhaps this was a prompt for revolutionary action? Religious imagery was used constantly with the panning shots, even in the opening scenes, similar to Water. The ending is certainly allegorical for Quebec's proximity to death and decay. The anachronisms within the film also display the lack of change in the culture and the inhabitants of the church. This mirrors the lack of change in the culture in Water, due to the ambiguity of safety for the widows throughout the film. The corruption that follows is increasingly devastating. The important message here for both films, seems to be a need for change, a reform.
In Water, the cultural, political and controversial matters are highlighted throughout. The subject matter in itself is quite taboo in conservative Indian culture; as widows are treated differently, often ostracised from their previous community and are placed in a misogynistic place in society. This is explicit in the film, with the politics of religion being criticised. The other women are not allowed to keep their hair because they are widows. Another scene that displays the raw immorality and abusive mentality is when Madhumati (the owner of the Widower’s home) forces Kalyani into prostitution and uses the profits to cover the ashram’s expenses.
The film elucidates the harsh conditions in which women are forced to live each day. The women who speak out against this are depicted as religious radicals, to silence and diminish their voices. Under ancient Hindu tradition widows all across India are secluded and are considered bad luck, as well as being blamed for their husband’s death. Albeit, this is still contemporary Hindu fundamentalism in both the film and present-day Indian society. Feminist philosopher Martha Nussbaum writes that religions have repeatedly endangered the basic rights of all humans. She affirms that “religious discourse is often powerfully coloured by issues of political power.” Mehta questions cases where widowed women like Metha Bai in India are unable to work outside of the home due to religious restrictions and thus running the risk of starvation for themselves and their families. I
n Water, Chuyia and the other widows enact the conflict between the predominant Hindu culture and the choice of communal resistance. Gary Becker’s “maximisation of utility” states that everyone in the household should put aside their own feelings and do what they can to benefit the family as a whole. In response to this, Nussabum argues that “in real life, however, the economy of the family is characterised by pervasive ‘cooperative conflicts,’ that is, situations in which the interests of members of a cooperative body split apart, and some individuals fare well at the expense of others’. Thus, Nussbaum suggests that more focus be placed on the rights of the individuals who comprise that household. This again stresses the dire and distraught situation Hindu widows live in, in India and the psychological complexity of living in these conditions. The film concludes ambiguously; the result of most Indian Widows’ stories in reality. There are women that are supporters of the oppression like Madhumati, who are oppressors. They are brainwashed into believing this is the only fate for widows. There are those in between like Shakuntala who are aware of the social and religious injustice but are unable to do anything about it. This displays the major power imbalance, not only between the two genders but also between widows and married women.
Water in the film is dangerous and deadly symbol. This can be seen through Kalyani’s storyline. When Kalyani and Chuyia are out washing are washing a dog that they have hidden in the ashram, a Bengali Brahmin from a conservative family who has recently become involved in the independence movement, as a follower of Gandhi. The two meet, talk romantic Bollywood talk, fall in love, move around to music, and eventually plan to marry. Angered at the potential loss of income, Madhumati cuts off Kalyani’s hair. Narayan, however, still loves her despite this and Shakuntala defies Madhumati by unlocking the ashram’s doors that Kalyani can go to her lover. On the way, however, across the river to Narayan’s home, Kalyani recognises the house to which she is going to and realises that this is where a wealthy customer has repeatedly slept with her. She realises that the patron is Narayan’s Father, Seth Dwarkanath. Unable to tell him what is wrong, she asks him to turn the boat around and take her home. She then drowns herself in the river, just before Narayan, after having an angry confrontation with his Father, was about to tell her that he would still marry her anyway.
The oxymoronic romantic storyline is even fatally dooming to end; Mehta reflecting the realism of the widow’s lives. The hierarchy of the caste system is also predominant here, as Seth is a Brahmin (the top of the caste system), and it is still acknowledged that they are more divine than every other caste in Hindu tradition. Mehta’s two disturbing errors; her effacement of women’s struggle, and agency, as well as her effacement of religious debate and reform stem from the same distorted picture of human beings, this could be called Foucaldian. According to this structure, ordinary people are not agents, they are passive constructs of monolithic power structure that envelops and suffuses its own community. This is shown throughout the film often vividly and surreptitiously; with Kalyani’ suicide, the rape, the violence, the abuse towards widows, the abuse to all women in the film.
To conclude, Water offers a deeply disturbing insight into the realities of people’s lives across the world. The cultural politics surrounding within the film and surrounding the film is still relevant and was the main allegorical message from Mehta.
