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Water |
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| Movie: | Water |
| Director: | Deepa Mehta |
| Genre: | Social |
| Start Cast: |
Seema Biswas, Lisa Ray, John Abraham, Sarala, Raghuveer Yadav, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Vinay Pathak, Waheeda Rahman |
| Music: | A R Rahman |
| Our Rating: | **** |
| Review By: | Santosh H K Narayan |
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 Once again Deepa Mehta gives the audience a chance to peek into the darker images of our past that leave their imprints on our present. The Oscar nominee ‘Water' is her third attempt at dealing with buried sentiments of Indian society. Deepa Mehta started her trio-logy with ‘Earth-1947', where she portrayed religious fanaticism and communal carnage following the partition of India. Next in the line was the un-talked sexual dissatisfaction of Indian women in a most talked about movie ‘Fire'. ‘Water' is all about our reluctance to accept misdeeds, quixotic and most importantly our increasing intolerance towards a rational thinking mind.
The film talks about the plight of widowed women in pre-independence era at a time when social reforms movements were at their height across the country. The film highlights the unfortunate fate of the widows, who are forced to live a life of utter depravity and disrespect in the name of culture, tradition and religious Samsakaar as propounded by the so-called sacred texts.
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 Not long before, the widows were made to feel that they were like burden on rest of the society for the reasons out of their control. In some parts of India the condition is not better even today, and the movie reflects this beautifully through the lives of a child widow and an adult one. Deepa Mehta successfully puts a question mark on the face of all accepting Indian society. Hopefully, some eyebrows would frown and some widows might escape this disgusting plight.
Movie could not be shot in Banaras as the activists of Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad resorted to violence and made every attempt to disrupt the film unit. But Deepa Mehta made it up by using peculiar landmarks of this ancient cultural city like Ghats, Pandas, identical Chataries and narrow lanes.
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 Typical Banarasi language has been very powerfully used in the movie and it creates a huge impact on the audiences. However, Lisa Ray could have done a better job, as she looks un-natural. Her Canadian background becomes a flaw. But, A R Rahman creates the magic once again using folk themes in his music. He makes up for any flaw that could have been in the movie due to Lisa Ray's acting.
Film has been successful to hit the sentiments of the society as it unwraps evils, which would make it habitable for every section with due respect, dignity and humanity. It is said that nothing could be buried under water for a long and things would emerge sooner or later. True, Deepa Mehta's Water is very much successful in its task. But discouraging audience appearance in theatres is heart breaking for such movies that try to say something serious and ignite our soul-searching syndrome. |
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