By PLS
I just saw Deepa Mehta’s film Water, the long delayed completion of the trilogy that began with Earth and Fire. Now I want to see all three again, in quick succession, and soon.
But a funny thing happened in the middle of the scrolling of the credits at the end of the film. The Indian names of the actors gave way to Sri Lankan names for the behind-the-scenes people. And therein hangs a tale....
The story, circa 1939, focuses on widows thrown out of their families and condemned to eke out a living by begging (and maybe prostitution) in Hinduism’s holy city of Varanasi on the Ganges. Naturally Mehta wanted to shoot the film on location in Varanasi, but conservative Hindus were furious about making too widely known this ugly truth about the consequences of following the Dharmaśastra slavishly. There were death threats and lesser unpleasantnesses as well. It was impossible for the production to continue on the scene of the crimes, so to speak.
The script of Water called for showing what actually happened to Brahmin widows in Bengal, even to the little girls who never even saw let alone cohabited with their doddering husbands, and the film gives us the texts that long justified the mischief. The film also shows how reform came and was often ignored. Was? Is, even now, in many cases. Instances of widow-burning still occur from time to time, too.
Although Hindu reformers have advocated widow remarriage since the late nineteenth century, the topic was too hot to be shot in today’s India. Amazing! When it comes to women, the most brutal traditions are to be veiled in secrecy, evidently, even in a country set on overcoming the US lead in advanced electronic wizardry.
So the future of Water looked dim until Sri Lanka came to the rescue. Sri Lankan waterways sprouted Gangetic bathing and burning ghats, and the film was completed. It’s beautiful to look at, careful with facts and deeply affecting. I felt as if Rabindranath Tagore and Satyajit Ray, each of whom produced feminist works in his characteristic medium, were looking down and cheering, “Yes! Yes!”
But Water isn’t the only film that’s suffered from attempts at religious censorship recently. Calls for suppressing the just released The Da Vinci Code came from the Philippines, India, Sri Lanka as well as here and there in the West. The censors seem to have failed to enlist enforcers in most cases, fortunately. Censorship is a weak reed for faith to lean on. If the church fathers can’t counter the allegations in this pathetic murder mystery, they don’t deserve to be in the pulpit.
However, there’s no way to equate the two films otherwise. The original of the Da Vinci Code was a tendentious and badly written exploitation of titillating intellectual fads. The previews of the film look so dreary (and the reviews are so tepid or worse) I’m not going to force myself to see it, even though I made myself to read the entire novel, when its recycling of myths and ancient conspiracy theories became so popular.
For the record, I am neither a Christian nor a Hindu. My objection to the Da Vinci Code is purely intellectual and aesthetic, and my gratitude for Water comes from the same directions. Those who want to cling to the past for good or for ill should probably be more worried about Water. It will last. The Da Vinci Code probably won’t.
Note: I’m not going to link to a lot of reviews. If you are reading this, you know how to get to them quickly all by yourself.