Movie Review - Water

Frankly, I don't see what all the hullabaloo was all about.

I can see no reason why some chauvinist fundamentalists had to go and trash a movie set, for the content of the piece is anything but controversial. Perhaps the setting and the depiction may be too realistic for those brought up on a steady diet of Bollywood. The story is set in times long past, and instead of realising that this sort of thing went on but is no more, some miscreants decided it was an affront to Hinduism.

The story, allegedly centered around the lives of Hindu widows in 1930's India, is more or less about the idealistic young lawyer, played by the John Abraham and The sublime Lisa Ray as the young widow who is forced by circumstance into a being a concubine for the rich and high-caste gentry in the vicinity; and their forbidden love. The free-spirited young child widow, is more or less the innocent bystander, who is steamrolled into the life of widowhood.

John Abraham really hit his personal acting goldmine when he signed up for this project. It is refreshing not to see Abraham straddling a Hayabusa, making teenyboppers in tube tops swoon as he races past. Lisa Ray looks luminous, but her acting is more or less tame.The Best bits however, are from the "bandit-queen" actress, Seema Biswas, who plays the widow who questions her faith and the life she leads in the face of the feisty child, and the relationship of the lawyer with the pretty widow. Khulbhushan Kharbanda manages to look inebriated even as a priest, in spite of the fine acting. How does he do it? { ;-) }
The background, set in Pre-independence India, provides a very rich background to the main story, and is beautifully tied into the climax, when everything is nicely wrapped up in a piece of khadi {again, ;-)}

overall, a touching movie, with notable performances and a fine love story.