Water as in the film by Deepa Mehta, not the liquid itself 

I watched this on Friday night, after getting back from hanging out with friends after a rehearsal (on which, BTW, I was playing keyboards, of all things...). So it was about 2am or so when I popped it in the computer...

Really good film. I'd seen Deepa Mehta's "Fire" years ago, which I was kind of lukewarm about, but nevertheless I decided to continue the elemental trilogy. Water was far better than (my memory of) Fire. Turns out Water is the final film in the elemental trilogy, and also it was written and filming began in 2000, then protests shut it down, then it was REstarted in 2004. Don't know how any of this contributes to the quality, but there you have it.

Ready for a plot spoiler?

Water, like Fire, addresses a subject that India loves to sweep under the rug, that of the plight of widows. Traditionally, and this is not true anymore to my knowledge, except of course in villages (which is umm, 90% of India's population, so I guess it DOES still happen ), widows are not allowed to remarry. And since they're dead weight, they're shipped off to ashrams where their heads are shaven and they live in forced asceticism. Combine that with child marriage which was also much more common in 1938 when the film takes place, and you have the plight of Chuyia, the 8-year-old widow protagonist of the film. Just to add more controversial twists, one of the young widows at the ashram is being prostituted by the head widow at the ashram. The whole thing teeters on the edge of being over the top, but doesn't quite get to status, thankfully.

[/spoiler]

As is typical of Deepa Mehta's films (or at least like all 3 that I've seen), there were both elements of Bollywood as well as Hollywood. Luckily, no dances and no wet sari scene, and AR Rahman composed 4 of the songs, so the Bollywoodness wasn't nearly as bad as it could've been. In fact, it was a real good mix of Bolly and Holly. The score was done by a Canadian composer, I think she said he went on to do LOTR, so props for that.

Also, I watched the entire thing again with Spanish subtitles and with Deepa Mehta's commentary on. This did 3 things for me:
1. Gave me lots of really interesting background details*
2. Made me hate Deepa Mehta just a little bit because she just DOESN'T SHUT UP!
3. Gave me practice in 2 foreign languages. Though in reality I was just listening to Deepa Mehta and not following the film.

*film was shot in Sri Lanka because the previous attempt in India was met with protests
*the girl who played Chuiya is an 8-year-old Singalese girl who did not know any Hindi (and had never acted before) and just learned her lines phonetically
*the entire ashram was a built set. This was really damn impressive because it was made to look huge and intricate
*the prostitute is a 1/2 Indian 1/2 Canadian girl. And she's really beautiful. Though I didn't need the commentary to know that

Anyways, I'm rambling. That's about enough for now. Good flick, check it out