Deepa Mehta’s controversial film debuts
By BRUCE KIRKLAND - Toronto Sun
http://jam.canoe.ca/Movies/2005/09/07/1205148.html
TORONTO - It has been a long, bitter and now triumphant journey for Toronto filmmaker Deepa Mehta.
Five years ago, Hindu religious fanatics stormed Mehta’s film location in India, shutting her down under threats of personal violence. Mobs burned and then threw her sets in the Ganges River. Mehta was told she should be beaten. The government turned on her, withdrawing a film permit. Mehta fled the country before police came to arrest her.
All because she dared to shoot a dramatic film about the plight of widows forced into poverty, servitude and even prostitution under ancient traditions.
Tomorrow night, film fanatics will be poised to accord the Indian-born, Canadian filmmaker a standing ovation when Water – that film shut down in 2000 – makes its world premiere at the 30th Toronto International Film Festival. It is the official opening night Gala, the festival’s most prestigious screening.
“Water has been such a tumultuous journey,” Mehta tells the Sun, “and it has been heart-breaking and scary and very dangerous. To put it on hold for five years …”
Her voice tightens. Mehta has fire in her eyes. “I was also very angry when we were shut down.” Angry at the mob in Uttar Pradesh, angry at the Hindu fundamentalists, angry at the “paranoid” officials in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in the Indian government.
"I was really angry and heartbroken. It was a sense of feeling helpless when you’re suddenly surrounded, when forces against you are much larger than you and they’re political and they’re violent and you don’t expect it.
“It was just horrific. So I think it took four years just for the anger to dissipate. I needed to discover what I loved about the characters again.”
Mehta says that the message in Water is humanistic. “It’s rather simplistic but that’s what it is: That there is room for redemption and hope, however grim things are; that the human spirit does have that ability to do something that is selfless, even under the most horrendous circumstances.”
The project was eventually relocated in strict secrecy to Sri Lanka, where Mehta finished filming earlier this year with a new cast, including a Sri Lankan village girl, Sarala, in the pivotal role. She plays a child bride and new widow who turns a widows’ house topsy turvy with her impetuous ways.
The story takes place in 1939 Colonial India during the rise of Mahatma Gandhi. Water is the final piece in a controversial trilogy about Mehta’s homeland that began with Fire (1996) and continued with Earth (1998), films which inspired riots in India because they also dared to upset fundamentalists.
Most of the film is in Hindi with subtitles, although some passages are in English. Filmfest co-directors Piers Handling and Noah Cowan both told the Sun they are proud Water is the opening night film because it is not only a fine film, but that it represents a Canadian perspective on the world.
Mehta was absolutely stunned when it was chosen but now she feels it is right and just.
“If Canada is a multicultural country, if Toronto is the epitome of what a diverse city is, then somehow you need signifiers, some kind of validity, a symbolic gesture.”
A Canadian-made film set in India in Hindi is a perfect signifier, she says, “that we are different from the States and, yes, we are a country that acknowledges that it’s not just the Anglophones and the Francophones who make up this country. So, suddenly, it makes sense. Why wouldn’t it open the festival? Because I am Canadian, I’m just not an Anglophone or Francophone.”
Protesters weigh in on Mehta’s film
Deepa Mehta has already heard from protesters upset by her Toronto film festival entry, Water, but she still expects most people will not be offended.
“I’m getting calls,” Mehta tells the Sun as she prepares to present the drama as the official opening night Gala Thursday. “They say that I’m defiling the name of India – but I don’t see how!”
Mehta says that “fundamentalists” in the Hindu community said the same thing about her earlier Indian-themed films Fire and Earth. “And they said it of Satyajit Ray (acclaimed as the finest Indian director in cinema history) and that I am very happy about. It’s good company. So there are always people like that.”
The only way to please people who want to suppress films such as Fire, Earth, and Water is to make travelogues or propaganda pieces about her home country, Mehta says. “And then it wouldn’t be opening the Toronto film festival and it wouldn’t be opening around the world.”
Most South Asians here are happy Water is opening Toronto, Mehta says. “It makes them feel good. It makes them feel like they belong in Canada – and it’s not just lip service.”