WATER 2005

Water 2005



Water 2005

Thesis

Water is a film based on the societal standards of India in the 1930's. The movie portrays the Hindu beliefs of a woman's life after her husband's death. the film reaches out to the audience this film shows the troubles of a widowed woman in india and reproduces the norms in an effort to show its viewers that shows the viewers something about how wrong those views are, how unfair, and how they are misguided-misguided interpretations of religion and religious texts.

Water 2005

Introduction

Mehta's visual choice in coveying the cruelty of such an institutional marginalization is powerfully portrayed in the opening scenes of Chuyia being tonsured, her bangles violently smashed and then dressed in a long white homespun cloth. Reminiscent of shorn Jews during Nazism, the close filming of the razor being scaped across her scalp suddenly takes the viewer to Chuyia's abrupt descent into widowhood and sets the tone for the stringent existence in which she must now live. The old woman, Madhumati (Manorama), sternly reigns over the ashram with the help of Gulabi (Rajpal Yadav), a eunuch (hijra) who arranges evening meetings between widows and rich men in order to financially support the widow colony. Unwilling to resign to her fate, Chuyia challenges the oppressive restrictions of the ashram and invariably creates a change in the lives of other widows such as the beautiful widow-prostitute Kalyani (Lisa Ray) and Shakuntala (Seema Biswas), a middle-aged widow who is the only one capable of taming the old tyrannical Madhumati. Kalyani meets Narayan (John Abraham), a young upper-class Gandhian idealist whose love for the beautiful widow poses a threat to the social and moral order of the ashram. Yet, despite the strict dissent the couple meets from both their communities, they continue to meet until Kalyani discovers that she used to visit Nayaran's father as a prostitute and decides to end the relationship. This, and the rejection from the ashram because of her disobedience, pushes her to commit suicide. Madhumati finds a substitute for prostitution in Chuyia who is taken away to a client by Gulabi. It is too late when Shakuntala finds out, yet, knowing that Gandhi and his followers are visiting the city, promoting his ideas of peace and a cast-less society, she courageously resolves to take Chuyia away from the colony and gives her to Narayan as his train departs, confident that the child will be taken care of. (Sharma, Jyotirmaya. 2003)

Like the other films in Mehta's elemental trilogy, Water pushes the boundaries of India's male-dominant cultural narratives beyond patriarchal predicaments by portraying a more nuanced world-view in which human beings can live and interact fluidly and unpredictably, thus overcoming the rigid discourses imposed by hegemonic hierarchies. The potential for expressing love and cooperation is what moves Mehta's characters toward more salubrious scenarios even though some of the protagonists are left utterly defeated.

Background

Deepa Mehta's elemental trilogy, Water tells the tale of brow-beaten oppressed widows in early 1900's India. Our eyes and ears are that of infant ...