Trial by Water Deepa Mehta raised Hindu hackles in India with latest film Finally made in Sri Lanka, Water opens film festival today
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer? pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Artic le&cid=1126131012664 SUSAN WALKER ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER "Did you cry?" Deepa Mehta wants to know. The director of Water says she still cries, even though she's seen her film many times. After 10 years, from conception through a cancelled production in India to a successful shoot in Sri Lanka, Water is now outside her, up on the screen. The movie opens the Toronto International Film Festival tonight with a gala screening at Ryerson Theatre. Mehta was in the Indian holy city of Varanasi when she saw a Hindu woman "bent like a shrimp, her body wizened with age, white hair shaved close to her scalp" looking for something she'd lost on the steps of the Ganges. This sight gave her the idea for what was to become the Indian-born director's eighth feature film. It is an 8-year-old girl, her head shaved to the scalp in one of the opening scenes, that is likely to become the indelible image for viewers of Water. The child does not even recall the marriage to her much older husband, who has just died. She has no concept of widowhood before she's placed in an ashram full of white-gowned, cloistered widows, some of them very old. Originally a girl in India played the part. But after extremist Hindu protestors wrecked the set in Varanasi in 2000, the production was shut down. Water was finally made in 2004 in Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, Mehta auditioned girls in the south coast village of Galle to find her Chuyia, the child widow. Sarala, now 9, could speak neither English nor Hindi. She had never acted before. "I had to learn Sinhalese, and I became very good at sign language," says Mehta, relaxed and happy now, and conducting interviews in her midtown back garden. "But she's such a bright kid that it was a cinch. She's an intelligent, intense child." Nothing from the aborted two-day shoot in India remained in the film, she says. "The first scene we shot was of the little girl having her head shaved. She's 12 now." Based in Toronto, but frequently found in India, where her parents live, Mehta may be the only living filmmaker to have had herself burned in effigy. Such rage has been aroused by two of the three films in her Fire, Earth and Water trilogy, that her name is enough to inflame radical religious factions. With Water, she says, "They (fundamentalist Hindus) didn't know what it was really about. They felt that in some way Hindu widows really have an opportunity to do something good by becoming segregated. By questioning that, I'm (considered to be) defaming Hindu culture. It's not true at all because this is not what pure Hinduism is all about." Nor is it what the movie is about, according to the director. "The nucleus of Water is the conflict between faith and our conscience," she says. That conflict is most played out in the role of Shakuntala, a quiet widow of middle age played by Seema Biswas, an Indian stage actor, who made her film debut in Bandit Queen. "I've never worked with such a fine actor in my life," says Mehta, praising her performance as the widow who is the most devout Hindu and also Chuyia's protector. Chuyia befriends Kalyani, the only widow in the ashram who has retained her long hair. She is played by the gorgeous, Toronto-born Lisa Ray, the star of Mehta's 2002 musical film Bollywood/Hollywood. John Abraham is Narayan, the Gandhi follower who falls in love with Kalyani. Abraham holds an M.B.A., and has landed immigrant status in Canada. He was first spotted in India as a model and is now a huge Bollywood star. His arrival at the Toronto airport on Monday was no secret to the 50 or 60 teenage girls who came out to greet him with screams of delight. Mehta won't pretend to be anything but thrilled with the position her film has earned in the Toronto festival. Water is the favourite of her features, she says, "It the least self- conscious of my films. No pun intended the trial by fire that I went through in 2000 really cleansed a lot of stuff that I didn't need for the film." Now that Fox Searchlight has picked up U.S. distribution rights for a spring release, a lot of the anxiety over the film's reception is removed. Mehta can concentrate on her next script: a drama based on the 1914 Komagata Maru incident. A ship carrying Sikhs from India and Sri Lanka was refused entry into Vancouver. "It is an amazing story," she says, with a look of excitement over a new creative voyage. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Life without art & music? 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