Water

Deepa Mehta is a provocateur. This Indian-born, Toronto-based filmmaker has specialized in delving into provocative themes that question the premises of her own culture. In 1996, she directed Fire, a shocker for many because it presented a lesbian affair, a situation barely acknowledged in Indian society. In 1998 came Earth, which offered a hard look at societies torn asunder by religion during the 1947 Partition. Both of these films were banned in the sub-continent. Now, with Water, her “elemental” trilogy is capped with an unvarnished look at traditional Indian widowhood and its travails, a theme no more likely to endear her to that country’s authorities (film opens May 5).

For historic effect, Ms. Mehta has set her story in a town in the colonial India of 1938, with the Gandhi phenomenon building, and with most Indian cities still mired in long-held rituals and practices. One of the strangest--for us in the West--requires that widows, of any age, be ostracized from the general society so they may remain “virtuous.” Since, according to sacred writ, “ a wife is part of her husband,” she is nothing without him and must be socially isolated--thus, untainted. The practical effect such a practice has hits us right at the film’s opening, when we watch sweet and chubby young Chuyia (Sarala), all of eight years old but promised to a groom, become a widow when her much older betrothed dies, leaving her a child “widow,” yanked away from her family forever to live in a compound of other solitary women, her head shaven and her resting place a mud floor.

The girl cannot comprehend what has happened to her, but--though feisty and a fair tester of limits--she learns to adapt, and to accommodate to her elders, a coarse, mountainous grande dame, a sniveling crone she comes to call “Auntie,” and a decent mother figure, the melancholy Shakuntala (Seema Biswas). She is also befriended by the younger, lovely Kalyanli (Lisa Ray), who has been able to live somewhat apart from the others. Kalyani dominates a sub-plot wherein she falls in love with the earnest young Narayana (John Abraham), a promising student from a prominent Brahmin family. Kalyani, it turns out, is already involved with that family as the mistress of Narayana’s dissolute father (a situation about which he knows nothing). How Kalyani eventually resolves her dilemma with father and son, and how Chuyia becomes a part of that family dynamic become the heartbreaking and gut-wrenching finale of Water. The dramatic--and tentatively hopeful--finish also involves the triumphant appearance of the Mahatma himself.

Pieces of other films from South Asia kept coming back to me as I watched Water. There are moments reminiscent of the fine documentary Born into Brothels in the depiction of a constricted all-female environment, or of the poignant Osama (from Afghanistan) for its unblinking look at the tribulations of a discarded young girl, or, inevitably, of scenes from Satyajit Ray’s monumental Apu trilogy. Still, Ms. Mehta makes this her story and keeps it coherent and moving, and--especially when following young Sarala as Chuyia--generally captivating. The tale, which contains incendiary elements, avoids real pyrotechnics by developing at a measured (sometimes too s-l-o-w...) pace. We are dropped into a world we may struggle to understand, but the director helps us decode what that world was like and what it might become.

Some Short Takes... on films now in release.

Friends With Money - Nicole Holofcener’s dissection of four gal pals in La-La land is basically honest, occasionally insightful, often amusing, but finally too thin as she recounts the narrow lives of several self-centered and very comfortable friends, on whom the outside world seems to impinge but little. The only one who is not comfortable--and who seems otherwise out-of-sync with the film--is stumbling Olivia, played with dull quirkiness by a distracted Jennifer Aniston. The other actresses--Joan Cusack, Catherine Keener, and Francis McDormand are all fine as successful yet troubled wives, especially Ms. McDormand, a successful businesswoman who is going through a very rough patch in her life. Though the men in these women’s lives are definitely second fiddle, one of them, Simon McBurney, stands out as a touching, faithful husband who no one can believe is NOT gay. Ms. Holofcener may be aiming, in a way, at a Los Angeles version of a Woody Allen “relationship” movie, but, instead of these lives jelling, they mainly just drift off...

Mountain Patrol - Probably as far away from Friends With Money as you can go thematically and geographically, this Chinese-made film shows how a group of downtrodden Tibetan tribesmen go after poachers of the storied Tibetan antelope. Based on the true story of such patrols in the 1980’s, it is told through the presence of a Beijing journalist (Zhang Lei) who comes to the Himalayan highlands to report on the patrols and gets involved in their dogged trek to locate a key poacher and his gang. This search takes place among one the starkest of landscapes you are going to see in the movies, reminiscent, to this viewer, of the world of the great Inuit film of a few year’s ago, The Fast Runner. The story is simple, the characters almost archetypes, the outcomes of their efforts bleak, but if you get caught up in this sweeping, ominous world (no, it is definitely not Shangri-La!), it can prove riveting.

Films on the Hill

An intriguing mix of films from Hollywood’s golden age mark this month’s offering at “Films on the Hill” at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. The month’s most prestigious film is The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944) which screens on Wednesday, May 17th. A colorful profile of one of America's greatest humorists, it features a standout lead performance by Frederic March and covers Twain’s life from his days as a river boatman in Hannibal to his last days as an international icon. On Wednesday, May 10th, Slave Ship (1937) will be shown. Set during the time of the infamous slave trade, the film stars Warner Baxter as the skipper of the last Atlantic slave ship who must contend with a motley crew that includes first mate Wallace Beery, mutinous George Sanders, and cabin boy Mickey Rooney. Wednesday, May 24th brings International Lady (1941), a suspenseful WWII espionage thriller with George Brent as an American agent and Basil Rathbone as a Scotland Yard man, both of them hot on the trail of seductive spy Ilona Massey. To learn more about this month’s program, log on to filmsonthehill.com. All films are shown in the Arts Workshop’s Black Box Theater. All films begin at 7:00 p.m. and are shown in 16mm. Admission is $5.