Nonureva Really Surprised!

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Galina "Water" (2005) that was written and directed by Deepa Metha, the Indian- born Canadian film director and screenwriter, is a final part of her Elements trilogy, Fire, Earth, and Water. Each film deals with serious and often unknown outside of India problems that the country has inherited over its long history of religious traditions that always played highly important role in all aspects of Indian society. Water, a heart breaking tale of Indian widows, is set during the early 1940s and tells the compelling story of an eight-year-girl who learns that she became a widow. Her parents married her when she was an infant to an unknown man but were taking care of her until she was old enough to become a wife to the husband she never met. After his death, according to the holy laws the little girl had only three choices in her life: to burn with her husband on the funeral pyre, to marry his younger brother or to become untouchable and spend the rest of her life in an ashram - a shelter for widows at the temple, on the banks of the great river.Delicately beautiful and colorful film introduces the viewers to several unfortunate widows of different ages who whose families have abandoned them forever. The women have to live together and use any means possible for surviving. Pain, grief, loss, sacrifices are the essential parts of their daily struggles. Deepa Metha deserves every praise and award she has received for her memorable and passionate film which may shock the viewers who would not imagine what choices were available to a woman - widow back in the days and even now in some rural parts of India. But the film also praises the beauty of nature, joy of friendship, and eventually, it brings hope for better future for those women and their country.Not only is Water an exquisite work of art, it is an important social statement. So important, indeed, that the Indian government interfered with the production process, canceled the funding of the film, restricted Metha to shoot in India, and did not stop the fundamentalists' riots that threatened the physical violence toward the female director and the members of the crew.If the things have improved in India, as the officials proclaim, why the government hated so much just the idea of the film and caused all kinds of obstacles for Deepa Metha and her crew?

180696 180696 Water is a movie about widows that don't really try to escape being a widow or get remarried but one woman thought it was right and she should be able to get remarried. I think this movie is trying to tell us that if you truly believe it is right, and try, it can be achieved. This is kind of like living up to your own worldview. One example of someone living up to their worldview is when one widow wanted to get married and all the other widows wanted to stop her because they believed it would curse them. She fought through them and was able to take down the peer pressure because she truly loved that man. Her whole community was against her but she still was able to go for what she believed was right. Chuyia (the little girl) also showed how she tried to fight for her worldview because when she announced that one of the widows were going to get married, one of the older widows said she couldn't. Chuyia started stepping harshly on the older widow which shows how she was standing for what she believed was right. A final example of a widow trying to what she believes is right is when Didi takes the key from the elderly widow who locked up the widow that wanted to get married. She freed the widow so she could get married, but she knew this would make many have no respect for her. Overall many people in this movie did what they truly believed was the right thing to do in their situation, and some went beyond Gods commandments, not sure if God would be okay with it but it was her worldview and she thought it was true.Arc of Movie: This movie talked about a young widow (around 7 years old) being taken to a widow house with many other widows. She meets a widow named Kalyani who meets a man and wants to marry this man. Other widows say if she marries this man she will get cursed. Kalyani commits suicide and another widow doesn't want Chuyia (the little girl) to live with the other widows in their sad life so she gave Chuyia to the handsome man that Kalyani wanted to marry, when he was on a train with Gandhi.

claire-frohling I think that one of the most remarkable parts of the movie Water, directed by Deepa Mehta, is in the beginning, when a little girl named Chuyia is asked by her father if she remembers getting married, and she replies that she does not remember. She is eight years old at the time. Chuyia's husband dies, and she becomes a widow for the rest of her life. She is required to cut off her hair and she goes to live with other widows. The movie is set in 1938. Thinking about this aspect of Hindu life opens my eyes to how different the world was not so long ago. The girl, Chuyia is ripped away from her family, and is forced to live a brand new life, and she didn't choose any of it. She did not choose to be a widow or to live in this facility, and she never even got to choose to get married in the first place. Chuyia begins to make friends in the ashram. One of them is Kalyani. She is a widow just like Chuyia, except she has been forced into prostitution by the head of the ashram for financial reasons. This is why Kalyani is the only one who can keep her hair in the ashram. One day, Chuyia chases Kalyani's dog down the streets when it runs away. She runs into Narayan, who is a follower of Gandhi. Kalyani and Narayan end up falling in love. There is a glimmer of hope for the two, when a law is passed that widows are allowed to marry. The same is true for Chuyia, and she has more hope for a better future. Overall, the movie is a great depiction of how widows in India were treated. It seems so wrong that they are being treated like this, just because they no longer have a husband. In this situation, Mahatma Gandhi saved so many widows, because they were now able to live like the rest of the world's widows and remarry, or simply carry on a regular life.

SerenaY HK The people who make a difference in this world are nothing more than people who listen to their conscience. This is a profound idea found in a movie that made those people who listened to their conscience the focal point of the movie. That movie is Water, written and directed by Deepa Mehta. While filming, Mehta received many death threats for her work on this controversial film focused on the concepts of misogyny and ostracism of female widows in India. Set in 1938 India under British rule, it begins with young seven year old Chuyia (Sarala Kariyawasam) being awoken and told by her father that her arranged husband has just died, making her a widow. She is a victim of the previously common practice of child marriage. Then she is whisked off to an ashram in rural Varanasi where many other widows also live. Widows in the Hindu India have a lower position in society. The fourteen widows in the ashram are expected to live out the rest of their lives in poverty, hardship, and worshiping of Gods. They live in a tiny two-floor house, living there to repent bad karma and to relieve their families of financial and emotional hardships. The only reason why I didn't give the movie a 10/10 is because of the multiple scenes that dragged on for a little bit too long and it was hard for me to understand some parts. For example, it was hard to understand why she demanded the boat to turn around and why she drowned herself in the river was unclear to me because I couldn't keep track of the men outside of the ashram, besides Narayan, that later turned out to be her clients. Overall, this movie has a beautiful and moving plot that uncovers many truths in the Hindu society for Indian women. I had known that in the Hindu religion, women that have husbands passed away, were burned on occasion, but I would have never known about the mental and emotional pain felt by these excluded women. For example, Narayan's mother's reaction to his announcement of them getting married, the rude street vendor who wanted to get rid of Chuyia, Madhumati who locks Kalyani away in a room so that she can't get remarried, and the deplorable men who exploited Kalyani and Chuyia. With Deepa Mehta's film, all these hardships have been intelligently brought to life for the thirty-four million widows in India since 2001 that are still living under social, economic, and cultural impoverishment engraved upon them two-thousand years ago by the Sacred Texts of Manu. She highlights characters Narayan, Kalyani, Shakuntala, and Chuyia in the film as people who speak out about these rules that bound widows. This is what makes them different from other people, they act on their consciousness.