As a famous director in India, Deepa Mehta has a picture in his mind that has been kept in mind for 10 years. It was in the pilgrimage site of Varanasi. Mehta saw a widow shrinking into a shrimp shape, her body weathered by the years, her hair so short that it clinged to her scalp, she was running on all fours, frantically looking for someone who had fallen into the Ganges River. something. In the early morning pilgrims, her pain was clear, but even when she cried, no one noticed. At that time, Mehta was working as a series director for George Lucas' TV series "YoungIndianaJonesChronicles". She was walking on the banks of the Ganges River, hoping to perceive the reason why this place attracts pilgrims from all over India, so she saw the widow, which Mehta created. This is where the inspiration for "Water" came from.
In 2000, after receiving approval from the Indian government, Mehta assembled the cast and crew in Varanasi and began a six-week pre-shoot on the Ganges River. However, not long after the film started, Hindu extremists showed up at the filming site and protested strongly all night, accusing the film of slandering India, burning Mehta's portrait, throwing filming equipment into the river, and marching around the city, and none of these people Read the movie script. The government sent 300 soldiers to maintain law and order, but it was still to no avail. Some people even decided to commit suicide by jumping into a river in protest. As the conflict intensified, the crew decided to stop filming.
When Mehta's filming was forced to stop due to the violence, it immediately aroused the anger of the international community. George Lucas immediately issued a full-page statement in "Variety" in solidarity with Mehta, but the effect of foreign public opinion pressure was minimal.
It took Mehta 4 years to get the film back on, because it would be too dangerous and reckless for the crew to shoot in India, so Mehta moved to Sri Lanka and re-looked for actors.
The story of the film takes place in India in the 1930s. Although today's India has developed rapidly, and those rules and regulations about widows have long been abolished, in this huge country with 33 million widows, amazing problems still exist. They were humiliated, banished by their families, besieged by poverty at the bottom of society, and appeared in corners as beggars and prostitutes. The exposure of their living conditions is still a hot topic of controversy, and the extreme performance of those religious extremists is enough to prove that the film has exposed the stubborn diseases in Indian society.
"Water" is the third film in the director's Elements trilogy (the first two were "Fires" and "Soil").
