Published by
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at 04:53:52 pm on March 9, 2007
Cast: John Abraham, Lisa Ray, Seema Biswas, Sarala
Director: Deepa Mehta
Producer: David Hamilton
Music Director: A R Rehman
Cinematographer: Giles Nuttgens
Water is a film that hits you hard and takes your breath away. Water is a rare film that has the power to redefine the parameters of cinema, to realign the function and purpose of the medium, and to restructure the way we, the audience, look at the motion picture experience.
Set against the pastoral backWaters of pre-independence India, Water centers on the occupants of a home for Hindu widows in 1930s India. The home is a ramshackle place in which the women are supposed to acquit themselves of bad karma, and their families from financial burden.
The head of the establishment, the ganja smoking, Madhumati (Manorama), also runs a side business a prostitution ring, in which she, with the help of the eunuch transvestite Gulabi (Raghuvir Yadav), pimp out the widows and others to aristocrats in order to bring in money. It is a world rife with dehumanization, poignantly in line with the trilogy’s theme of ostracized individuals grasping for freedom under the weight of social prejudice and traditions.