handful_ofdust (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
handful_ofdust) wrote2005-06-10 10:44 pm
handful_ofdust) wrote2005-06-10 10:44 pm
Water Review
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moon_custafer and green_trilobite are getting married tomorrow, and since I’m one of the bridesmaids, I spent tonight picking up my tie-in scarf and discussing the ceremony over Japanese food, while Steve "and Cal" shopped for wedding presents. (You get that I added quotes around Cal’s name because what he mainly did was sit in his stroller and play with his toes, right?) The presents also include one for Jason Taniguchi and Jen Judge, whose wedding we attended and then defaulted on sometime…was it last month? The year is definitely getting away from me.
Watched The Machinist last night, which is Kafkaesque and stylish and not bad at all, even though it’s fairly obvious where things are going from frame one on. The spectacle of Christian Bale 60 pounds lighter is definitely hypnotic, though—like a special effect, except not. Or a memento mori in celluloid form: What’s inside a hunk, anyway? Granted, Bale reduced to base-line bone and tendon is still palpably himself, weirdly attractive even as you horrify yourself by counting his vertebrae every time he turns his head to answer someone…but he’s a walking fucking skeleton, man. Seriously, I don’t understand how he even managed to sit down between takes without his pelvic ridges ripping out through his hips.
In other news,agincourtgirl wanted to know how Water was, so here’s my mini-review, censored for those who don't want any spoilers at all:
Given the film’s controversial and difficult background—the first time Mehta tried to film it, rioting protesters burnt down her sets and forced her out of India—I went in wanting it to be a triumph. But now, having seen it, I’m stunned by just how much of a triumph it is. Physically, the movie is stunningly beautiful without looking pristine or manufactured, with a score by one of Bollywood’s best composers, two hot-as-Vindaloo-curry stars (Canadian Lisa Ray and Indian supermodel-turned-actor John Abraham [who also, as the publicist was quick to point out, has Canadian citizenship—CanCon times one hundred or more! Eat your fuckin’ heart out, CAVCO scale!]) and art direction by Mehta’s brother, who manages to make Sri Lanka’s riversides and temples look so much like Benares it’s incredible. Technically, this is Mehta’s most assured film yet, and since pretty much everything she’s done has been epically stylish—aside, that is, from I’m-flailing-for-a-personal-ethos-type early stuff like Sam and Me or that shapeless pseudo-Hollywood sophomore thing she did with Bridget Fonda—this really is saying something.
In terms of content, meanwhile…the reason Water offended so many people on the first go ‘round was because it deals directly and unsentimentally with the very prickly subject of how widows are (still) treated in India, where sacred texts condemn a woman who dares to remarry to "be reborn in the womb of a jackal" for cheating on her dead husband. The story takes place in 1938, in the holy city of Benares, on the river Ganges. Chuyia, our main character (played by a girl who’s never acted before, and doesn’t seem to be acting now), is nine years old and doesn’t even remember getting married when her husband—at least three times her age—suddenly dies. Before she can even take this turn of events in, her head is shaved, her possessions burnt, she’s dressed in white and dumped by her own father on the doorstep of a communal "home" run by widows, for widows.
The widows, most of them middle-aged to geriatric, live in poverty and desperation under the rule of two senior widows. One is a good Hindu of unshakable faith who spends her days sprinkling river-water everywhere, scrubbing away her "sins" in the tide, forever trying to atone for whatever it was she did to make her husband die. The other is a corpulent, cynical tyrant who pays the commune’s rent by pimping out Kalyani (Ray), who came here when she was Chuyia’s age, to any rich Brahmin who asks about her—men who purport to have a philathropic "interest" in the sorrowful status of widows, who are treated like complete pariahs: Forbidden to eat friend food, forbidden to grow their hair, routinely accused of "defiling" anyone they might happen to accidentally touch. ("Now I’ll have to wash again!", one grumpy woman complains to Kalyani, when she runs into her at the riverside.)
Chuyia doesn’t understand any of this, thinks it’s unfair and refuses to keep quiet about it. When Kalyani attracts the attention of Narayan (Abraham), an idealistic Brahmin follower of Ghandhi who wants to marry her even though he knows about her sideline in prostitution, she rejoices; it seems as though her simple, decent, Krishna-worshipping friend will actually be able to rise above her ill-fortune and "live like the lotus flower, untouched by the filthy water it floats in"—and better yet, if Kalyani can do it, who’s to say they won’t all be able to do the same someday? But…
…I think we all know at least part of where I’m going with this, don’t you? And no, I can’t tell you that the denouement isn’t heart-wrenching—but it’s also hopeful, and the restraint Mehta shows throughout is amazing. This is all potentially lurid, melodramatic stuff, but it’s never allowed to slip over the line: We simply draw our own conclusions, and weep because of them. And in the background, the river flows on, washing everything—and nothing—away. There’s a conclusion, but there is no real end.
So yeah, not easy. Just brilliant.;)
At any rate: Checking in with the TFS, I’ve ascertained that I’ll be starting to teach again during the week of July 11, maybe on Tuesday or Wednesday. This even though the place is a bit of an uproar because my immediate boss, head of the Digital Film and TV Production department, is in the hospital and may not be coming back out. He got a staph infection in his ankle which turned septic; now he’s in ECU, on a respirator, non-responsive for over six days. As John Foote says, it’s astounding he’s alive at all; suffice to say, he won’t be back at work anytime soon.
Okay, and on that rather sombre note, it’s off to bed for me. ‘Night.
moon_custafer and green_trilobite are getting married tomorrow, and since I’m one of the bridesmaids, I spent tonight picking up my tie-in scarf and discussing the ceremony over Japanese food, while Steve "and Cal" shopped for wedding presents. (You get that I added quotes around Cal’s name because what he mainly did was sit in his stroller and play with his toes, right?) The presents also include one for Jason Taniguchi and Jen Judge, whose wedding we attended and then defaulted on sometime…was it last month? The year is definitely getting away from me.Watched The Machinist last night, which is Kafkaesque and stylish and not bad at all, even though it’s fairly obvious where things are going from frame one on. The spectacle of Christian Bale 60 pounds lighter is definitely hypnotic, though—like a special effect, except not. Or a memento mori in celluloid form: What’s inside a hunk, anyway? Granted, Bale reduced to base-line bone and tendon is still palpably himself, weirdly attractive even as you horrify yourself by counting his vertebrae every time he turns his head to answer someone…but he’s a walking fucking skeleton, man. Seriously, I don’t understand how he even managed to sit down between takes without his pelvic ridges ripping out through his hips.
In other news,
agincourtgirl wanted to know how Water was, so here’s my mini-review, censored for those who don't want any spoilers at all: Given the film’s controversial and difficult background—the first time Mehta tried to film it, rioting protesters burnt down her sets and forced her out of India—I went in wanting it to be a triumph. But now, having seen it, I’m stunned by just how much of a triumph it is. Physically, the movie is stunningly beautiful without looking pristine or manufactured, with a score by one of Bollywood’s best composers, two hot-as-Vindaloo-curry stars (Canadian Lisa Ray and Indian supermodel-turned-actor John Abraham [who also, as the publicist was quick to point out, has Canadian citizenship—CanCon times one hundred or more! Eat your fuckin’ heart out, CAVCO scale!]) and art direction by Mehta’s brother, who manages to make Sri Lanka’s riversides and temples look so much like Benares it’s incredible. Technically, this is Mehta’s most assured film yet, and since pretty much everything she’s done has been epically stylish—aside, that is, from I’m-flailing-for-a-personal-ethos-type early stuff like Sam and Me or that shapeless pseudo-Hollywood sophomore thing she did with Bridget Fonda—this really is saying something.
In terms of content, meanwhile…the reason Water offended so many people on the first go ‘round was because it deals directly and unsentimentally with the very prickly subject of how widows are (still) treated in India, where sacred texts condemn a woman who dares to remarry to "be reborn in the womb of a jackal" for cheating on her dead husband. The story takes place in 1938, in the holy city of Benares, on the river Ganges. Chuyia, our main character (played by a girl who’s never acted before, and doesn’t seem to be acting now), is nine years old and doesn’t even remember getting married when her husband—at least three times her age—suddenly dies. Before she can even take this turn of events in, her head is shaved, her possessions burnt, she’s dressed in white and dumped by her own father on the doorstep of a communal "home" run by widows, for widows.
The widows, most of them middle-aged to geriatric, live in poverty and desperation under the rule of two senior widows. One is a good Hindu of unshakable faith who spends her days sprinkling river-water everywhere, scrubbing away her "sins" in the tide, forever trying to atone for whatever it was she did to make her husband die. The other is a corpulent, cynical tyrant who pays the commune’s rent by pimping out Kalyani (Ray), who came here when she was Chuyia’s age, to any rich Brahmin who asks about her—men who purport to have a philathropic "interest" in the sorrowful status of widows, who are treated like complete pariahs: Forbidden to eat friend food, forbidden to grow their hair, routinely accused of "defiling" anyone they might happen to accidentally touch. ("Now I’ll have to wash again!", one grumpy woman complains to Kalyani, when she runs into her at the riverside.)
Chuyia doesn’t understand any of this, thinks it’s unfair and refuses to keep quiet about it. When Kalyani attracts the attention of Narayan (Abraham), an idealistic Brahmin follower of Ghandhi who wants to marry her even though he knows about her sideline in prostitution, she rejoices; it seems as though her simple, decent, Krishna-worshipping friend will actually be able to rise above her ill-fortune and "live like the lotus flower, untouched by the filthy water it floats in"—and better yet, if Kalyani can do it, who’s to say they won’t all be able to do the same someday? But…
…I think we all know at least part of where I’m going with this, don’t you? And no, I can’t tell you that the denouement isn’t heart-wrenching—but it’s also hopeful, and the restraint Mehta shows throughout is amazing. This is all potentially lurid, melodramatic stuff, but it’s never allowed to slip over the line: We simply draw our own conclusions, and weep because of them. And in the background, the river flows on, washing everything—and nothing—away. There’s a conclusion, but there is no real end.
So yeah, not easy. Just brilliant.;)
At any rate: Checking in with the TFS, I’ve ascertained that I’ll be starting to teach again during the week of July 11, maybe on Tuesday or Wednesday. This even though the place is a bit of an uproar because my immediate boss, head of the Digital Film and TV Production department, is in the hospital and may not be coming back out. He got a staph infection in his ankle which turned septic; now he’s in ECU, on a respirator, non-responsive for over six days. As John Foote says, it’s astounding he’s alive at all; suffice to say, he won’t be back at work anytime soon.
Okay, and on that rather sombre note, it’s off to bed for me. ‘Night.