Water

Water

Main Cast:
Sarala Kariyawasam -- Chuyia
Seema Biswas -- Shakuntala
Lisa Ray -- Kaylani
John Abraham -- Narayan

Brief Plot Overview:
"Do you remember getting married?" asks an elderly man. "No," responds a little girl. Yet alas, this little girl--7-year-old Chuyia--was married, and now her husband is dead, making her one of the lowliest creatures in Hinduism: a widow. Forced to wear the marks of a widow for the rest of her life, Chuyia is sent a temple where widows live in abject poverty.

FILM -- 3.5/5
Maybe it's my parents' new HD TV and Blu-ray player that's making the difference, but I really thought Water was beautifully filmed. Deepa Mehta knows how to use colors to create emotional landscapes, and the use of whites and blues and soft, layered fabrics really adds to the "water" feeling. The film uses a mixture of long shots and close-ups to help you garner a feel for the charactes and the world they live in. The characters are also fleshed out by well-written dialogue. Yet I take issue with the script as a whole. It is often uneven, it can be a little confusing, and it seems to keep the story running slow while the character themselves are catapulted through a variety of emotional developments. This adversely effects Water's overall emotional power, and while I felt horrible for the situation of these poor widows, it wasn't because of the movie. Honestly, simply telling me about the situation would have produced just as much emotion.

CHARACTERS -- 4.5/5
Water marks the best performance I have ever seen by John Abraham. His acting is admirable and he looks as good as ever, although his interactions with the lovely (but somewhat dull) Lisa Ray seem rather stiff, and I found the chemistry between the two lacking. A lot of people loved Lisa Ray in this movie, but I thought she looked...well, dull. There was no real fire in her eyes, and she seemed half-dead throughout most of her performance. Sarala Kariyawasam, the little girl who plays Chuyia, is one of the best child actresses I've ever seen. And who can forget Seema Biswas, who has a knack for creating the most intense and complex female characters with a single glance? I may have hated Bandit Queen, but she was incredible as Phoolan Devi, and she is the true star of Water. The supporting cast is also excellent and includes Manorama as a villainous "house leader" turned pimp named Madu and the multi-talented Raghubir Yadav as Madhu's hijra assistant.

SOUNDTRACK -- 4/5
Water has a lovely, if slightly repetitive, primarily instrumental soundtrack. What few lyrical songs are there are sung with passion and skill, and Sukhwinder Singh even pops in for a tune early on in the film! I was pleasantly surprised to see that Sukhwinder Singh wrote a lot of the lovely Hindi lyrics.

OVERALL -- 2.5/5
Just as a romantic masala film must have a lot of charm to stand out, a social drama must have a lot of power. It isn't something you can describe in terms of technical mastery or acting prowess; it's an unexplainable emotion that wells up in you as you watch a film and connect with it on a deeper level. Unforunately, Water doesn't really seem to have that power. It's not because the film isn't "super-shocking," because films with less graphic detail like Pinjar AND films with more graphic detail like Dil Se both manage to gain responses beyond shock. (My post on Bandit Queen further explains how I feel about films that use shock to gain an emotional response from the audience.) The truth of the matter is that, while Water is an important film and a technically good one with great performances, it doesn't really move you beyond the surface level. It also suffers from some choppy editing and pacing issues, although a less nitpicky viewer probably wouldn't even notice. Because it is socially relevant, I feel like everybody should give Water a viewing, but if you want to see a Deepa Mehta film that does move you, try Fire instead.

TOTAL SCORE -- 14.5/20 (really good)