San Francisco Chronicle
'WATER' CONCLUDES ELEMENTAL TRILOGY
Pam Grady
Sunday, April 30, 2006
The San Francisco run of "Water," Canadian director Deepa Mehta's drama about the plight of widows in 1938 India, represents the latest triumph for a film once thought dead. Hindu fundamentalists in the holy city of Varanasi shut down the original production in February 2000 when they destroyed sets and threatened the lives of the Amritsar, India, native and her cast and crew.
It was 2004 before Mehta revived the film, the third in her elemental trilogy that includes 1996's "Fire" and 1998's "Earth," with a new cast and a new location in Sri Lanka. Back in 2000, other Indian provinces let her know they would welcome the production, but the Varanasi experience left her furious. Afraid that that ire might seep into the film, she abandoned it instead.
"It took four years for that anger to dissipate," she says. "I was really angry for a long time."
A thunderous ovation greeted Mehta when "Water" screened at a packed Castro Theatre on March 19 during the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. The next day, not even a rainy Monday morning could dampen the filmmaker's spirits.
During an interview, she is still aglow from the reaction.
"It was fabulous, that kind of energy," she says. "To do a film takes so much out of you and it's screenings like this that give you that energy back."
Back in 2000, the fate of "Water" became a cause celebre within the film community. George Lucas even ran a full-page ad in Variety to show his support. That was fitting because, whether he realized it or not, it was he and producer Rick McCallum who inadvertently provided the spark for "Water" when they sent Mehta to Varanasi to shoot a 1993 segment of their TV series "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles."
It was there on the banks of the Ganges that she caught sight of an elderly widow frantically searching along the steps for a pair of lost glasses. Mehta helped the despairing woman back home to an ashram where widows live in poverty and exile from society.
"My exposure to the ashram was something that stayed with me for a long time," Mehta recalls. "I knew that when I was exposed to the institution in Varanasi and the ashrams, I knew that I really wanted to do a film. I didn't know what the story line was about, but that it would be about the widows."
"Water" begins with the abandonment of 8-year-old Chuyia (Sarala) at a Varanasi widows' home. The spirited little girl never really grasped that she was married, and she cannot understand why her parents have left her in this house presided over by the vicious head widow Madhumati (Manorma). Chuyia's fate is to live out her days here in banishment, her head shorn, praying and begging for alms. But the child is obstinate and her spirit infects the entire household.
In 1938, Mahatma Gandhi carried his nationalist message throughout British-occupied India, but while he figures tangentially into the story through the actions of Narayan (John Abraham), one of his adherents, that is not the reason that Mehta set the film then.
"I wanted to set it through the eyes of a child. And child marriages were prevalent in the 1930s," she says. "To set it through the eyes of a child, the reason was because it's a nonjudgmental eye. It's an innocent eye."
Mehta extensively researched the plight of India's widows and spent four months visiting ashrams in Varanasi and northern India, talking to the women.
"I spent a couple of nights in an ashram, which was mind-blowing to say the least," she says. "It was very depressing, that kind of existence, that kind of life and the despair. I think that's what got to me more than anything."
Life in those houses has changed somewhat since the 1930s. Child marriage is illegal, so there are no more child widows, and a network of temple trusts, charitable institutions and the government run the ashrams. But young widows are still sometimes exploited and drawn into prostitution. And ongoing corruption means that money meant for the widows sometimes does not filter down to them.
"So a lot of them still eke out a living by singing hymns for about eight hours. That's what they do from 8 in the morning until 5 in the evening or whatever, continuous singing. And for that, they get a handful of rice and lentils. Or they beg," Mehta says.
When "Fire" opened in India in 1998, Hindu fundamentalists, angered by its story of unhappily married sisters-in-law who fall in love, staged sometimes violent protests against theaters showing the film. It was a hint of trouble to come, but Mehta notes that no film gets made in India without permission from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, and no script deemed harmful to any religion is approved. The government gave Mehta consent to move forward with "Water," but that meant little to the mobs convinced that the film would disrespect their religion.
Mehta still smarts over the final incident that led to the shutdown of the production, when a protester attempted suicide by throwing himself into the Ganges. Soldiers soon arrived on set, telling Mehta that the man's actions had galvanized a rapidly advancing mob.
"We found out about two hours later that the man did that for a living, he was paid to do it," she bristles. "And the mobs that were supposedly coming to attack us were about 12."
The four-year layoff resulted in a very different film from the one she might have made six years ago. She is not sure that "Water" is stronger because of it, but the Sri Lanka set proved to be one of the happiest she has experienced, and she feels she has grown as a director.
With "Water" in theaters and even opening in India in the fall, Mehta relishes this ultimate victory over so much adversity.
"It's gratifying," she says. "There's a sense of achievement to be sure, because it was such a tough, uphill task to get there, and there's a sense of disbelief: 'My God! I'm there, and it's done.' " "Water" (PG-13) opened this weekend in the Bay Area.
Pam Grady is a freelance writer.