Deepa Mehta, who has been described as "Canada's most internationally renowned woman film-maker" (Levitin, An Introduction..., p 273), was born in 1950 in Amritsar, a city on India's border with Pakistan. Like many other Hindu families, Mehta's parents had fled the newly created Pakistan at the time of Partition in 1947. Mehta's father was a film distributor and owned a number of movie theatres. As a child, Mehta watched hundreds of movies in her father's theatres but did not have an early interest in becoming a filmmaker. Mehta studied philosophy at the University of New Delhi.
After graduating from university, Mehta had her first experience in the film industry when she went to work for a company that made educational and documentary films for the Indian government. Mehta had the opportunity to direct her first film, a documentary about a child bride based on the experience of a fifteen year-old girl who had worked in Mehta's family home. It was at this time that Mehta met Paul Saltzman, a young Canadian filmmaker who was doing research in New Delhi. They married, moved to Toronto in 1973, and with Mehta's brother Dilip, started Sunrise Films. Sunrise Films began by producing documentary films and then branched out into television work.
In 1974 Mehta made her Canadian directorial debut with an acclaimed documentary, At 99: A Portrait of Louise Tandy. Together Saltzman and Mehta undertook a documentary film series, Spread Your Wings, about the inventiveness and dedication to crafts of young people around the world. In 1985, Deepa Mehta directed Travelling Light, a television documentary about her brother Dilip, a renowned photojournalist. This film was nominated for three Gemini awards and was a finalist award at the 1987 New York International Film and Television Festival.
In 1987, Mehta produced and co-directed Martha, Ruth and Edie, a film based on works by Alice Munro, Cynthia Flood and Betty Lambert. It was screened at the Cannes International Film Festival and won the Best Feature Film Award at the 11th International Film Festival in Florence in 1988. Mehta's debut feature film Sam and Me was released in 1991 and won an honourable mention in the Caméra d'or category at the Cannes International Film Festival. This film, like many of her later films, is both a deeply personal film and a film that has universal emotional content. With the success of Sam and Me, Mehta received offers to direct two episodes of George Lucas' television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and the big budget feature Camilla (1994).
In 1995, Mehta, now divorced, began work on Fire, the first of a powerful and controversial planned trilogy of films set in India. With Fire, Mehta, determined to maintain artistic control of her films, began her practice of taking on the dual role of writer and director. Fire (1996), a film that tells the story of two middle-class Indian women trapped in arranged marriages, earned Mehta critical acclaim and awards including the International Jury Prize for the Best Film at the Verona International Film Festival in 1997. Critics attributed Fire's widespread success, in part, to Mehta's ability to build empathy across cultural borders. Mehta herself commented:
"Even though FIRE is very particular in its time and space and setting, I wanted its emotional content to be universal. The struggle between tradition and individual expression is one that takes place in every culture. FIRE deals with this specifically in the context of Indian society. What appealed to me was that the story had a resonance that transcended geographic and cultural boundaries." (Fire Zeitgeist Films, online)
The second film in Mehta's trilogy, Earth (1998), is about the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan as seen through the eyes of a young girl. Earth, described as an intimate epic, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 1998. Earth was India's entry for the 1999 Academy Awards and has won numerous awards. In speaking about Earth Mehta commented:
"Film is a powerful medium and my hope is that Earth will produce a dialogue and force people to think more deeply about the cost of such divisions… I wanted to tell this really large story from the standpoint of an intimate group of friends from different ethnic groups and trace out the process of partition through them." (Phillips, online)
The filming of Water, the third film of Mehta's Indian trilogy, began in 2000. However, Mehta was forced to abandon shooting when violent controversy erupted, instigated by Hindu fundamentalists. Speaking about returning to Toronto after the Water experience in India, Mehta said, "It took me about 3 months to decide what I wanted to do next, and sitting at my kitchen table I said really what I wanted to do was something that was life-affirming, that was fun, that was foot-tapping, that made me feel glad to be alive, and I wrote Bollywood/Hollywood (Talk Cinema, online).
Bollywood is the name given to the distinct style of Indian commercial cinema based in Bombay. In Bollywood/Hollywood (2002) Mehta uses both genres as backdrop to a movie about the lives of Indian families in Toronto. In speaking about this well-received film Mehta said:
"When I was introducing the film at the Toronto Film Festival last year, I said to them, it would really help if you'd put on your dancing shoes and park your grey cells in the basement. Because it's not an intellectual, logical film. It's a film about the spirit of feeling good, and singing and dancing. And if you're open to it, a window into another culture. To see how more than 1 billion people live and survive in the world." (Talk Cinema, online)
Mehta's most recent film, Republic of Love, based on the Carol Shields novel by the same name, premiered at the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival.
Mehta has developed a well-earned reputation as innovative and courageous filmmaker whose movies often address the universal issue of identity and tradition. Mehta herself notes: "If you think of Sam & Me, Fire, Earth, even Water, all of them were about where does one's own voice stop and the baggage of tradition begin. It's the conflict between the individual voice and the voice of tradition…I don't sit down to write a script with these ideas in mind, in as much as they always seem to come out in my films."
-- Edited by RJ_Sonia at 21:14, 2005-10-28
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Screened at the Toronto International Film Festival
Like "Bandit Queen" and "Maya," "Water" bravely delves into outmoded social traditions of India, thus roiling the waters of religious fundamentalism, which might mean that Deepa Mehta's film will never get past the censors in that country. "Bandit Queen" and "Maya" certainly didn't. But the film, whose sheer beauty and compelling storytelling is equal to its social protest, really is made with one eye on the international market.
"Water" is another in the new wave of Indian movies that seek to bring Indian culture and cinema to audiences beyond the Indian diaspora. The story does require a bit more understanding of Indian history and culture than, say, "Monsoon Wedding." So Fox Searchlight, which recently acquired the film, needs to target sophisticated urban audiences and the college crowd. Certainly the issues of sexual inequality explored here transcend all cultural references, so "Water" should find appreciative audiences worldwide.
The third film in Mehta's "Elemental Trilogy" -- "Fire" and "Earth" precede it -- "Water" is set in 1938 Colonial India during Gandhi's rise to power. The practice of child brides was then prevalent. When the much older men these Hindu girls married for economic reasons died, the widows were considered financial burdens by their families, who sent them to a house where they were forced to live lives of austere penitence.
The film initially focuses a bright, 8-year-old widow, Chuyia (Sarala), whose father drops her at an ashram for widows. The place is run by Madhumati (Manorma), a hugely fat and domineering woman in her mid-70s. The child's tongue and rebellious instincts upset the household for several days as she meets the widows who reside in this dilapidated two-story dwelling built around a courtyard.
The one who first befriends the child is Shakuntala (Seema Biswas). She struggles to calm the girl down even as she herself struggles with issues of faith and self-worth. She closely questions an affable priest, who recites scripture at the ghats or stone steps down to the river, presumably the Ganges.
Gradually, the focus shifts to a young widow, who could be Chuyia in another decade. This is Kalyani (Lisa Ray), who is very beautiful. To earn money for the ashram, Madhumati uses the services of the pimp Gulabi (Raghuvir Yadav) to prostitute Kalyani to the Brahmin gentry across the water.
When Kalyani's puppy escapes and Chuyia gives chase, the dog is corralled by a handsome law student and Gandhi nationalist, Narayan (John Abraham). He and Kalyani swiftly fall in love, but widows cannot marry. Actually they can, according to a new law, but as the priest admits, men ignore laws that inconvenience them.
Thus, Mehta neatly marshals the forces of Gandhi's rebellion against the British -- which is mentioned only in passing -- and all forces of liberalism in India against the oppressive traditions of child brides and widows' sufferings.
The film itself was shut down by Hindu fanatics, who in 2000 rioted and destroyed sets in Benares. Production resumed several years later in Sri Lanka. Re-creating her story in that lush setting, Mehta and cinematographer Giles Nuttgens light and create images of startling beauty. Indeed the calm magnificence and spirituality of the landscape make a violent contrast to the oppression these widows in white saris suffer and the complacency of a society soon to be torn apart first by Gandhi and then by Partition.
The actors from young to old are most accomplished, but the one who crystallizes the essence of the story is Biswas (who also starred in "Bandit Queen"). She is a woman whose faith sustains yet also imprisons her. These contradictions are never fully resolved, but we see in her face, especially her eyes, that her life has been forever changed and challenged by this child and then the unwilling prostitute. This leads to an act of courage and of hope for the future, which brings the film to an end.
WATER Fox Searchlight Pictures Mongrel Media presents a Telefilm Canada production with participation of The Movie Network, Super Ecran, Astral Media the Harold Greenberg Fund and Canadian Television Fund Credits: Screenwriter-director: Deepa Mehta Producer: David Hamilton Executive producers: Mark Burton, Ajay Virmani, Doug Mankoff Director of photography: Giles Nuttgens Production designer: Dilip Mehta Costumes: Dolly Ahluwallia Music: Mycheal Danna Editor: Colin Monie Cast: Shakuntula: Seema Biswas Kalyani: Lisa Ray Narayan: John Abraham Chuyia: Sarala Madhumati: Manorma Gulabi: Raghuvir Yadav No MPAA rating Running time -- 118 minutes
-- Edited by RJ_Sonia at 21:13, 2005-10-28
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