A movie works if it educates, entertains, or has artistic value. Thus, any film that successfully incorporates all three elements earns special praise and deserves a wide audience. That is how I feel about Deepa Mehta's Water, the final chapter in her trilogy about Mother India. Setting out primarily to educate the rest of the world about significant challenges with traditional Indian society, she fleshes out her melodramas incredibly and creates stunningly beautiful visual displays worthy of the Musee d'Orsay.

Like her two prior films (Fire and Earth) Mehta frames her narrative around a single issue--this time the plight of Indian women, who are sentenced to second-class status by ancient Hindu traditions. Set in 1938, Water deals specifically with widows. Even though laws did exist in India at that time that granted widows freedom to re-marry, old-liners ignored this. By tradition, a widow had three choices:

1. To throw herself on her husband's funeral pyre to depart this world in flames
2. To renounce the world and isolate herself in an ashram apart from society
3. To marry her husband's younger brother (if the family agrees)

What Westerners are certain to gasp over, is the age factor. Considering that traditional marriages are arranged and often involve young children, widows can be extremely young. In the beginning we see 8 year-old Chuyia (Sarala) riding in a cart at the feet of a weakening and very sick middle-aged man, but this is not her father. She is soon a widow and is dropped off at a barren ashram for lifetime widows--the film's first heartbreaking scene as she sobs uncontrollably for her absent mother. This is no short sojourn, evidenced by ancient old "Auntie," whose last pleasant memory is a sweet treat from her childhood wedding feast. Nor is Chuyia's experience unique since we soon learn of another who was married at the age of 7 and never even met her husband when widowed two years later.

Grossly overweight Madhumati (Manorma) runs the ashram and adds touches of humor with cranky commands, gutter language, and occasional flatulence. Young Chuyia rightfully avoids and taunts her initially and finds her first sympathetic soul in middle-aged Shakuntala (Seema Biswas), who serves as the film's moral center. Devout and thoughtful, she stoically accepts her fate but questions the foundations that have condemned widows to the same station as untouchables.

Chuyia soon befriends Kalyani (Lisa Ray), who represents Chuyia's likely near future. A strikingly beautiful young widow, Kalyani lives upstairs with her "secret" pet puppy, apart from the rest and is the only ashram member allowed to keep her long flowing hair. The reason is commercial (Madhumati would term it "survival"), as she is pimped to wealthy johns to pay the rent. None of the others appears as devoted to Krishna and prays as often; so you can imagine the burden she bears as the main income source for the ashram while simultaneously being shunned by Indian society and semi-isolated from her household comrades.

Kalyani's status is of no consequence to handsome young Narayan (John Abraham), a law student from the Brahmin class who follows the progressive teachings of Gandhi. Narayan sees the denial of remarriage rights to widows as barbaric, offering a practical reason for the practice: "One less mouth to feed, four less saris, and a free corner in the house. Disguised as religion, it's just about money."

With Gandhi continually in the background, parallel stories pointing towards a more progressive society, and poignant love story between opposites developing, the melodramatic elements all flow as naturally as the numerous watery metaphors sprinkled through the narrative. But what makes Mehta's film so powerful is the way she infuses such individual humanity into the characters that we grow to feel they are flesh and blood. We feel their joy and their pain at uncommon depths.

I freely admit that I was moved to tears a number of times. The two major stories involving the little girl and the young woman are poignant and satisfying, but Mehta's story branches off like the Bodhi tree. A third layer involves the strong saint-like middle-aged widow, who has led a life of servitude while struggling with detachment. She becomes the character that demonstrates the most growth, after realizing the relationship between Truth and God. Those who blindly follow tradition don't necessarily pursue Truth, nor do they follow the law when it's inconvenient.

This last chapter of Mehta's trilogy is her most powerful film to date--one that is enhanced by strong acting performances and beautifully framed camera work, shot on location in Sri Lanka. Considering the difficulties and physical threats that the filmmaker endured to make this film, Water is a must see film. Most U.S. filmmakers prefer more action oriented mindless popcorn movies, but those who wade into theaters will never forget the experience. They should find universal parallels to the horrors they witness here--Katrina should have set off red flags alerts. No one who's witnessed the underclass of poverty in the U.S. urban landscape should feel morally superior to the practices that Mehta effectively criticizes here.

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