While chasing the runaway dog through the streets of Varanasi, the city where Water is set, Chuyia encounteres Narayan (John Abraham), a law student. When he leads the lost girl back to her companion, he falls instantly in love with the beautiful Kalyani.
This is Water's significant flaw, which surprisingly, fortunately, doesn't sink the film - the love story is shallower than the average romantic comedy. They're both inhumanly attractive people, their characters are likable and idealistic, and that's supposed to be enough, I suppose. Most aggravating is that she acts like a different person around him, meek and submissive, with none of the impish exuberance she displays with Chuyia.
Fortunately, the movie's other depths rescue it from triviality. It's finely drawn melodrama with enough humour to make the tragedies even more devastating. While Chuyia and Narayan – and his belief in Gandhi's ideals - represent change on the horizon, Water balances hope with despair.
Explaining the fate of widows, Narayan says: “One less mouth to feed, four less saris, and a free corner in the house. Disguised as religion, it’s just about money,” in the line that perfectly encapsulates the message of the film. Mehta is not attacking religion – she's critiquing an interpretation of religion that allows for the degradation of these women.
Though the film is set almost 70 years ago, it ends with the declaration that many widows in India still live in societal and economic repression. Mehta is, of course, scrutinizing part of her culture she feels needs scrutiny. But before Western audience make accusations of third-world barbarism, she urges us to consider the broader message from our own cultural perspective. She points to the practise in Canada of sending elderly relatives to live in institutions, for example, as something she finds shocking.
“We are very good, as different nations and different cultures, to have a collective amnesia about our own [problems],” Mehta told the CBC. “[Water] is about three women trying to break that cycle and trying to find dignity, and trying to get rid of the yoke of oppression, and if it inspires people to do something in their own culture, that’s what’s important.”
(Water is now playing in Canadian theatres.)
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