Director: Deepa Mehta

Distributor: Criterion Pictres, USA

 

Set in 1938 in the twilight of colonial India, this film focuses on a group of women condemned to spend the rest of their lives in an ashram on the banks of the Ganges because they are widows. WATER, the third in the Elements Trilogy of films by writer and director Deepa Mehta, is a controversial piece portraying the institutionalized oppression of an entire class of women and the way patriarchal imperatives inform religious belief. Serene on the surface yet roiling underneath, the film neatly parallels the plight of widows under Hindu fundamentalism to that of India under British colonialism. Though Gandhi and his followers are an insistent background presence, the movie is never didactic, trusting the simple rhythms of the women's lives to

tell their story.