[Electric Cinema] Thoughts on Water by Deepa Mehta
The expectant audience slowly began to mill into the underground art space, Gongsanondo. A giggly hum saturated the air before the screening of Water by Deepa Mehta, the third and most critically acclaimed of her trilogy. The movie is based in 1938 India, when the country was faced with the challenging transition post British colonial rule. From the opening scene, the plot was clearly centered around the pitiful lives of widows who, according to the conservative reading of the Hinduism, were to die alongside their dead men or live a ascetic life as if they were half-dead.
The movie follows the lives of three widows, whose journeys prompts us to reflect on how consciously we do our moral decision making. The movie triggers you to look back around yourself and question the customs and traditions that have been generationally privileging a certain group. In the location, we see three different generations—a cheeky 8 year old named Chuyia, the beautiful and hopeless romantic Kalyani and the mother-figure Shakuntula, who we see boldly casting aside tradition in hopes for a better future for Chuyia. Throughout the film, the imagery is centered on the revolving lives of these females as they all seem connected by their mutual fates.
In the innocent and rebellious Chuyia, we see the defiance in Kalyani’s bold move to remarry, and again the same power is in the ending scene of Shakuntula’s sacrifice, who has shed her traditions to secure a better life for the next generation. However, we also see the same treachery in Chuyia’s trauma after being raped, the way Kalyani’s hope is shattered by institutionalized prostitution and Shakuntula, who is stuck in the lost generation of women.
Throughout the film, the characters repeatedly visit the River Ganges, where they bathe and cleanse, often sitting on the steps overlooking the water. It holds a spiritual significance for the widows, expressed in one widow’s dying wish yearning for one final sip. However, we know that the hope that lies beyond these waters is as futile as the green light that Gatsby imagined. When Kalyani falls in love and decides to elope with her new fiance, she crosses it for a different purpose to when she was being prostituted. Once across, her hopes are shattered as she realizes that her fiance’s father is the one who raped her. When she decides to drown herself in the water, the weight it held in hope is dispelled. Water seemed to symbolize antiquated traditions that held communities together on the surface, but one that did not apply its sacred status to every social group. Just as a disoriented Shakuntula asks a preacher, laws exist but are implemented only when it is agreeable to those in power. While the poor visit and rely on this river everyday, the rich and the progressive are speeding away in a train--the ultimate symbol of modernism. We see these hypocritical differences in other parts of the movie.
We see that the rich and powerful men like Narayan always don pristine white clothing symbolizing the godliness of their upper class status. Yet, through his father we see that they are the scum of society. On the other hand, the widows are forced to wear white clothing in shame, marking them as being inferior and cursed to all those who touch them. They are stripped of all color, and wear their husband’s deaths around them as ghosts. Even within these conditions, the women find ways to add color and vibrancy to their lives. We see bright yellow turmeric smeared on Churiya’s head by Shakuntula, and later again when the women are celebrating Holi, the festival of colors amongst themselves in their shabby complex. They revel in the bursts of color, spinning and laughing as they toss and smear each other in red, yellow and blue pigment. In these scenes of relief, we get the feeling that these women are ultimately unbreakable. There is an innate and marvelous resilience that no law or society can break down, a bubbling hope that there is a fight in them left. Watching Water prodded me to think again about the traditions I keep, and whether it has been carefully thought through to accommodate and empower modern women. It also reminded me to remember inclusive feminism and to remember the women on the margins, and prod at the controversial debate surrounding traditions and human rights.