http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Tue, 18 Sep 2007 07:01:07 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/09/02/204641.php#comment-633263 Very well written article/ review. Though I am not too sure if I would spend so much time and energy on this film. There is a word I had always heard about but its full meaning dawned on me after watching Water - the word is Kitsch. Actually I didn't watch the complete film. If I could please add to your exhaustive list - the picture of Gandhi that Narayan puts up in his room. I don't think Gandhi looked that old in 1938 !! But then you know, this film is made for the foreign audience, who has perhaps seen the Taj or been to Dharamsala or the Osho Ashram in Pune or has taken a backwater cruise in Kerala or the camel ride in Rajasthan. They wouldn't know that the banks of Ganga in Varanasi wouldn't have coconut trees. Or that Gandhi didn't look that old in 1938 (if at all he was adulated with photograph on the walls of his followers in small town India). I am not even getting into the other complicated areas. This film is not for you and me - dirty Indians, who send our child widows to Ashrams. We know these uncomfortable facts that would easily rank Deepa Mehta as part of Kitsch who hires eye candies like John Abraham and Lisa Ray to act in period films. And we are not part of the huge PR industry either that would call this film "sensitive". I have one small question - did Salman Rushdie really say what he is quoted to have said in the Deepa Mehta website for Water? If yes, where? I am really curious. I have another observation to make about these "Indian" films with an eye on the foreign market. Even top of the line film makers like Meera Nair are falling prey to this casual attitude to detail. Meera Nair's period film Namesake starts with a steel trunk on a coolie's head with a glowsign of IndusInd Bank behind. Do you think the Hinduja's financed that film? I don't know, but the backpackers aren't bothered really. We silly Indians are ...... 633263@blogcritics.org Tue, 18 Sep 2007 07:01:07 EDT