Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Galina "Water" (2005) that was written and directed by Deepa Metha, the Indian- born Canadian film director and screenwriter, is a final part of her Elements trilogy, Fire, Earth, and Water. Each film deals with serious and often unknown outside of India problems that the country has inherited over its long history of religious traditions that always played highly important role in all aspects of Indian society. Water, a heart breaking tale of Indian widows, is set during the early 1940s and tells the compelling story of an eight-year-girl who learns that she became a widow. Her parents married her when she was an infant to an unknown man but were taking care of her until she was old enough to become a wife to the husband she never met. After his death, according to the holy laws the little girl had only three choices in her life: to burn with her husband on the funeral pyre, to marry his younger brother or to become untouchable and spend the rest of her life in an ashram - a shelter for widows at the temple, on the banks of the great river.Delicately beautiful and colorful film introduces the viewers to several unfortunate widows of different ages who whose families have abandoned them forever. The women have to live together and use any means possible for surviving. Pain, grief, loss, sacrifices are the essential parts of their daily struggles. Deepa Metha deserves every praise and award she has received for her memorable and passionate film which may shock the viewers who would not imagine what choices were available to a woman - widow back in the days and even now in some rural parts of India. But the film also praises the beauty of nature, joy of friendship, and eventually, it brings hope for better future for those women and their country.Not only is Water an exquisite work of art, it is an important social statement. So important, indeed, that the Indian government interfered with the production process, canceled the funding of the film, restricted Metha to shoot in India, and did not stop the fundamentalists' riots that threatened the physical violence toward the female director and the members of the crew.If the things have improved in India, as the officials proclaim, why the government hated so much just the idea of the film and caused all kinds of obstacles for Deepa Metha and her crew?

Eric DUANMU Title: Water Director: Deepa Mehta Cast: Seema Biswas, Lisa Ray, John Abraham, Sarala KariyawasamThe movie Water powerfully showed the life of female widows in British-rule India. Although the acting was quite corny, it was fully able to convey a meaningful story and was not too distracting from the issues that the movie brought up. The components of the movie that stood out to me the most was the situation of which the movie took place, the acting, and the characters.The movie took place in India in 1938 when India was under British rule. During this time, marriage was common at young ages. Due to religious and cultural beliefs, even though remarriage of widows was legal, it was looked down upon with such severity that the women in the movie didn't consider doing it. This struck my as quite strange. I a small bit of extra research to find that even though widow remarriage was made legal by the British, Indians still considered it to be wrong. This negative view on widow remarriage was the main problem for Chuyia and the other widows. Indian society in that time period decided that a widow was lower on the social rankings and were to live in poverty and dedicate their lives to God. Chuyia was sent to a home with about 10 other widows who were left by their family due to beliefs. By more research, all of this information on widows in British-run India happened and are historically accurate which is what gave the film some controversy. Overall, I thought the historically accurate situation of widows in 1938 India which was demonstrated in Water was excellent and interesting.The acting in Water was not a huge problem and doesn't change the story at all but I personally thought the acting was not as great as the story. It was distracting occasionally when I thought about it instead of the story and content.Along with the situation and story of Water, I was also impressed and intrigued by the character relationship development as the story went on. Although the movie was short, the widows managed to go through many different stages in their stay at the home. Chuyia started as a fairly clueless widow but that soon changed when she met Kalyani and was following Kalyani's relationship with Narayan. Chuyia began to express her thoughts on being a widow and living in that housing area with the others. Kalyani and Narayan's love relationship was strong and happy through the movie until Chuyia gave it away and the others found out that this widow was in love again. There is also quite a twist which affected Kalyani's relationship with Narayan which was when she found out that Narayan's father was her former client. She drowns herself from depression and Narayan figured it out. Chuyia was forcedly sent out by Madhumati, a fat lady who is in charge of the widows, to take Kalyani's place in prostitution. Shakuntala, one of the more intelligent and widows, found out about Chuyia's prostitution and went to go get her. When she met Chuyia laying near the shore, she was already scarred from men raping her. Shakuntala decided that the building of widows wasn't the right place for Chuyia to be so she found a train that carried Gandhi on it and passed Chuyia to a man on the train in an attempt to have Gandhi care for her.The movie had a great story which was more intriguing due to the historical accuracy and the likeliness that something similar to the movie has happened. The acting not as high quality but was not bad enough to change my view on the movie or plot dramatically. The two most impressive components that stood up for me are the historically accurate story and character/relationship development.

claire-frohling I think that one of the most remarkable parts of the movie Water, directed by Deepa Mehta, is in the beginning, when a little girl named Chuyia is asked by her father if she remembers getting married, and she replies that she does not remember. She is eight years old at the time. Chuyia's husband dies, and she becomes a widow for the rest of her life. She is required to cut off her hair and she goes to live with other widows. The movie is set in 1938. Thinking about this aspect of Hindu life opens my eyes to how different the world was not so long ago. The girl, Chuyia is ripped away from her family, and is forced to live a brand new life, and she didn't choose any of it. She did not choose to be a widow or to live in this facility, and she never even got to choose to get married in the first place. Chuyia begins to make friends in the ashram. One of them is Kalyani. She is a widow just like Chuyia, except she has been forced into prostitution by the head of the ashram for financial reasons. This is why Kalyani is the only one who can keep her hair in the ashram. One day, Chuyia chases Kalyani's dog down the streets when it runs away. She runs into Narayan, who is a follower of Gandhi. Kalyani and Narayan end up falling in love. There is a glimmer of hope for the two, when a law is passed that widows are allowed to marry. The same is true for Chuyia, and she has more hope for a better future. Overall, the movie is a great depiction of how widows in India were treated. It seems so wrong that they are being treated like this, just because they no longer have a husband. In this situation, Mahatma Gandhi saved so many widows, because they were now able to live like the rest of the world's widows and remarry, or simply carry on a regular life.

museumofdave From the first electrifying moments when an eight year old bride is told her husband is dead and her head must be shaved and she must leave home to the boffo finish, this is a spectacularly photographed, moving drama about human potential wasted by traditions no longer viable.As with so many historical epics based on some kind of truth, every single incident cannot be accurate, and any film questioning religion of any kind is bound to have detractors--that said, there should be no question that the treatment of children and widows in this film is reprehensible.In this deeply felt film, love of all kinds also manages to flourish amid the squalor, whether the love of a outcast for her dog, or of a formally educated lawyer for a simple country girl condemned to a vow of poverty. This is a stunning film in many ways, capturing a glorious feeling of 1938 India (although it was actually filmed in Sri Lanka). It's an admirable story, well told.