{"id":3090,"date":"2006-03-06T00:35:48","date_gmt":"2006-03-06T05:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=3090"},"modified":"2006-03-05T22:42:55","modified_gmt":"2006-03-06T03:42:55","slug":"the_third_eleme_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2006\/03\/06\/the_third_eleme_1\/","title":{"rendered":"The Third Element"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sitting in the Hirshhorn museum’s Ring Auditorium after waiting for over an hour on Saturday, I really wanted to like Water<\/a>, Deepa Mehta’s last in her trilogy of films based on the elements. I wanted to write a glowing review of it for you all, but after sitting through it (and the really, really long introductory conversation between Mehta and the Smithsonian’s Manjula Kumar) I came away simply underwhelmed. It wasn’t that the movie was horrible, it wasn’t. It was just unimpressive. I think back to Mehta’s Fire<\/a>, it was unique for the time of its release and blessed with the presence of Shabana Azmi <\/a>and Nandita Das<\/a>; I found Earth<\/a>, the second installment of the trilogy phenomenal, visually stunning, musically evocative, and well directed. Contrastingly in Water<\/a>, I saw a cast of mostly uninspired acting, drab sets, and music that just faded into the background (perhaps by design?). <\/span><\/p>\n\n

The film was shot in Sri Lanka, and while watching the movie, Sri Lanka’s lush landscapes easily gives the non-India locale away. I can’t say for sure that in 1938 there were no palm trees in Varanasi, but I am not buying that the city’s ghats were surrounded by them. I found Seema Biswas <\/a>(Shakuntala) of Bandit Queen <\/a>fame and the relative newcomer Sarala<\/a> (Chuyia) playing the young widow excellent, but the beautiful Lisa Ray <\/a>(Kalyani) was mediocre at best. Shakuntala’s dutiful strength and <\/span>Chuyia’s na\u00c3\u00afve intelligence were indeed stark contrasts to the rather forgettable Kalyani (spoiler warning: one of my favorite scenes shows Chuyia sitting amongst the praying widows, fearlessly blurting a question to the pundit asking, “what happenned to male widows?”).<\/span><\/p>\n\n

I wanted to be moved by the climactic scenes featuring MK Gandhi, but I found them artificial and contrived, which only added to the hokey vibe of the movie. The film, it’s not bad, but I didn’t find it great. For the curious however, it’s a decent timepass.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n\n

Related posts:<\/span> earth, fire, WATER<\/span><\/a>, Water Is Finally Here<\/span><\/a>, Is Deepa Mehta Back in the Game?<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sitting in the Hirshhorn museum’s Ring Auditorium after waiting for over an hour on Saturday, I really wanted to like Water, Deepa Mehta’s last in her trilogy of films based on the elements. I wanted to write a glowing review … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3090"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3090\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}