Water

A film set in India in 1938. Chuyia is eight and does not know she was married. Her husband dies and she is taken to a house for widows and left there. The rules are old and strict. Her head is shaved, she wears white, she eats once a day, and she will stay in that house for the rest of her life. The house has about a dozen women in it. One is old and remembers sweets from her wedding. One is beautiful and is sent out at night to bring money in, which everyone knows and nobody says. From there the film follows the child's refusal to accept it, and the young woman's meeting with a man outside who follows Gandhi and does not care about her status. What the narrative is interested in is not custom but economics: the film says plainly that the widows are kept there because keeping them costs less than feeding them at home, and that scripture is being used to cover an account book. The last section moves toward a railway platform and Gandhi passing through, and the ending is not a happy one. The production has a history of its own. Shooting began in Varanasi in 2000 and was stopped by crowds who burned the sets and threw them in the river; the state withdrew permission. The film was abandoned. It was made five years later in Sri Lanka, under a false working title, with a different cast. Lisa Ray, Seema Biswas, John Abraham and the child actor Sarala are in the cast. Deepa Mehta wrote and directed; it is the third part of a trilogy after Fire and Earth. It was submitted by Canada and nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Who it is for: anyone who wants a well-made film about an injustice that is documented and largely unfilmed. Who it is not for: anyone looking for balance; the film is an argument and does not pretend otherwise.