OVP: Water (2006)

Film: Water (2006)
Stars: Seema Biswas, Lisa Ray, John Abraham, Sarala Kariyawasam
Director: Deepa Mehta
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Foreign Language Film-Canada)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

I still get Netflix discs in the mail.  I have done this for nearly 15 years now, and with over 900 movies in my queue at any given time, it's probable that I'll keep doing this until the service genuinely shuts down for good, having used it to see hundreds of movies in that time frame.  Only on occasion have I ever sent a movie back before I saw it, thinking that the dust it was collecting on my mantlepiece just wasn't worth putting it in, stomaching two hours of the film, and then realizing that I needed to see it for some list or project completion, and had it sent back to me.  The only movie I've ever done this with more-than-once (and I think I rented it four times before I finally saw it) was Water, a film that is best known by Film/Gay Twitter for Salma Hayek's complete disinterest in it.  Trying to get serious about knocking back a few movies that have been haunting my Netflix queue, I figured I needed to see Water, and after actually clicking the button & finishing it...I realized that my apprehension was right.  The film tries so hard to be important, and its subject matter surely is, but the actual film itself is a boring, messy tale with little to lend itself.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is the story of Chuyia (Kariyawasam), an eight-year-old girl who is forced into a child marriage, and then has her husband die very early into their arranged marriage (before they even meet), making her a widow, which in 1938 essentially forces her into the life of a disgraced woman, living with other widows in an ashram.  She befriends Kalyani (Ray), a beautiful woman whom the head of the ashram has turned into a prostitute (to pay the expenses of these women's lives, as they are disowned by their families and have no way of supporting themselves otherwise).  Kalyani meets Narayan (Abraham), a progressive thinker who wants to marry her despite her disgraced state, and is nearly willing to marry her when she realizes that his father was one of her clients, and turns back.  He confronts his father and tries to win back Kalyani, but it's too late-she's already killed herself.

This sort of gimmick-y "the worst possible thing in the world" aspect of the film is arguably its greatest downfall.  I have found in recent years with films like Water or Capernaum try to be as sad as humanly possible that we oftentimes confuse realism with quality moviemaking, but this shouldn't be the case.  I'm not disputing that women like Kalyani or girls like Chuyia existed & had lives that were heartbreaking-they certainly did, they likely do today to a different extent, and what society did to them is unforgivable.  These women deserve to have their stories told, but the movie uses tragedy not to underline the points of these women's lives, but to elicit sympathy from the audience while not really having a lot of plot to the picture.

That's a major problem here.  Abraham & Ray are impossibly beautiful, but they aren't particularly strong actors, and instead of trying to explore the complicated dynamics of their romance more, the director simply makes the audience want to cry, rather than make them want to think or understand these figures.  This happens again when Chuyia is forced into prostitution, and when Shauntala (Biswas) gives up Chuyia in hopes that she will have a better life with Narayan, even though her own life & dreams are never shared or discussed.  Biswas gives the best performance in the film, but that's not saying a lot-the film is filled with one-dimensional villains & only has room for saints/monsters.  The film's subject matter is serious, and is worthy of discussion, but I left feeling empty about the characters, and like the director was more manipulative than illustrative.