WATER

Hello Again,

Last night I watched the Canadian directed film Water (dir. Deepa Mehta). I had not seen this film in my Canadian Cinema class at the University of Toronto, unfortunately. SPOILERS MAY FOLLOW. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

I was expecting this film to be more sombre than it was; that is not to suggest that it was not sad. One of the two may characters does not make it to the end of the film alive. At about an hour and half through the film, the story got to a happy place. I thought to myself, if it ended here that would be the happiest possible ending that there could be for these characters. It however did not end at this point in the story, but went on for approximately another half hour.

I thought the film was a really interesting rumination of people of a country caught between old traditions and the new modern ideas that were coming out of the west and influencing the world over. Some characters welcomed the changes in tradition while others seemed to think that there was nothing wrong with the way they lived even though they were being subjugated and forced to either live as widows in a sort of convent/nunnery or marry the brother of there dead husband. I think that in the end the message of the film was that some of the country's ideas/tradition were backward and outdated, but that there was nothing wrong with many of the cultural traditions; the ones that did not infringe on the individual freedoms of women. Maybe I am off on this. I do not know. If you have insight into this culture or this film that I may lack , please leave comments for me and we can begin a dialogue. In the future, I welcome the idea of seeing Fire and Earth; the earlier films of Mehta's Elements trilogy; I know there are four elements, so do not bother pointing that out, please; ha-ha. I am funny. I do not care what you say, besides my wife says that I am funny and I have to believe what she says.

I hope that if you do not have an interest in seeing this film that you attempt to watch a film every now and again that you take a gamble on; whether it is a foreign film, independent or possibly direct to video (please exercise extreme caution when picking a film from this category; I mean it). I would love to hear your thoughts on some films that you may have seen recently, so please feel free to leave comments on my blog.

Thank you sincerely for reading.

Fanboy Dave