I believe you are being unfair and harsh with Deepa Mehta. I think that she is an admirable lady who went ahead in making the movie despite death threats.Her film is not like those nonsense Bollywood commercial films,set in luxurious mansions.She shows the real India, real people even if they are ugly!!And her film is purposeful dealing with social issues.Of course the film is not for the mass,only a certain type of audience would understand and appreciate it.
I commend Deepa Mehta for making a film that shows the truth as she sees it. I\'m a \"westerner\" married to a Bengali and learned about many hypocricies of Hinduism and Islam. Every religion as has it\'s own deep-rooted problems , Christianity included. IMHO I believe Deepa Mehta didn\'t show the movie only to negatively attack India, but also to give hope, as the child was symbolized as hope. and Seema Biswas represented a change in thinking. I understand that India is not all dark.The west has goody-goody movies just as in Bollywood, but they also have realistic movies with a sad ending. I enjoy both, and would not like living only with rose-colored glasses. No one can grow if they accept the good and deny what is dark,because you won\'t know what to fix. I loved the quote by Gandhi that truth is God. The West has it\'s dark side as much as India and i feel it\'s important to show the plight of all downtrodden including African Americans and Native Americans or anyone else who has been denied their basic rights. Deepa Mehta should not have been denied a right to free speech and shutting down her film in India made India look worse than if they had let her.
Water is extremely boring and slow movie. As if Deepa held most ugly women content and hired them for the movie - other than 3 main protagionists, all characters look ulgy - who would feel pity or sympathies for them? Plus the movie is shot in total darkness devoid of any day light as if done in some dark age in some western country. India is a tropical country and year-round sunlight. Using darkness to highlight darkness and passimism of the plot is too contrived as digging up Indian dirt from 1930s. Gandhi used to accuse christian missionaries of gutter inspectors - who would go out of their way to dig up dirt to slander and ashame hindus. Deepa has picked up same missionary zeal. The movie was funded by chrstians - Deepa too is married to a christian zealot and perhaps she is trying to prove her allegience to her new-found faith by rationalizing and hating the hindu faith she has rejected. It is triking that the main wondow protagionist is Lisa Ray - a white woman. Couldn't she find an Indian to play the part? It shows that the movie is intended to garner western sympathies. As if movie is trying to create a case for sonia gandhi's empowerment so that she can rule India.
is this a documentary or a work of fiction? having seen fire and earth it would seem that this would also be a drama...maybe there is a love interest...set against a historical backdrop...with dramatic possibilities...what is the real story?...what is this film maker really trying to show us about loving and living in the face of ignorance and brutality?...even though set in india...can't the main conditions (especially for women) be said to be universal?...if one person (woman) suffers in this world...don't we all?...what i carry away from mehta's films is a strong sense of the multi-dimensionality and resourcefulness of the indian woman's character throughout history...in kali yuga isn't all society supposed to be degenerate...even indian society?...thankfully, even in the face of it, we have indian women to guide our way...
