Entertainment

Director's project drew protests from religious groups

06:54 PM CDT on Thursday, May 18, 2006

By CHRIS VOGNAR / Staff Writer

A not-so-funny thing happened to Deepa Mehta on the way to making Water, a film about wrongs committed in the name of religious fundamentalism.

Fox Searchlight

Water director Deepa Mehta

Her shoot was shut down – by religious fundamentalists."It's very bizarre," the India-born Canadian citizen says during a recent stop in Dallas. "It would make a very good movie."

Water, the last film in Ms. Mehta's elements trilogy (the first two, appropriately enough, were Fire and Earth), is set in an Indian home for widows in the 1930s, during the rise of Gandhi and India's push for independence from Great Britain.

According to the Hindu Laws of Manu, widows are to spend their post-marital lives in an ashram, remaining faithful to their late husbands and atoning for sins for all eternity.

Not coincidentally, the arrangement also sends the couple's assets into the hands of the husband's family.

Widow homes aren't as common in India now as they were during the period the film is set. But that didn't stop Hindu fundamentalists from storming and destroying the set of the film they interpreted as being against their religion.

Ms. Mehta says the mob was encouraged by the state government in Uttar Pradesh, which then brought in troops to protect Ms. Mehta and her crew.

"That's how extreme fundamentalist politics work," says Ms. Mehta. "It's about telling the people that what they're doing is actually for their safety and welfare. There's always a nefarious purpose that you find later. You feel uncomfortable, because you can spot that this is not the truth, but you can't reason with them."

After shutting down the production in India, Ms. Mehta resumed five years later in Sri Lanka. Water finally had its premiere as the opening night film of the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival. Ms. Mehta has divided her time between India, where her parents still live, and Toronto for the last 25 years.

She insists the film is not anti-Hindu, and India's ministry of culture and information agreed when it vetted the script before the set was attacked.

But she makes no apologies for depicting how women are treated under fundamentalist rule.

"With most things in life that are used to oppress anyone, the real cause is usually about economics and power," says Ms. Mehta. "That's what it comes down to. You use religion to immobilize people and make them do what you want them to do in the name of God."

The film incorporates Gandhi through a young follower who falls for a widow (Lisa Ray). Ms. Mehta was more interested in Gandhi's role as a progressive within Indian culture than as a peaceful warrior in the battle for the country's independence.

"Ghandi became an interesting subtext, because he was part of the social fabric of India changing, not just as far as gaining independence from the British," she says. "He was instrumental in setting India free, but he also questioned many of the things we had taken for granted as a people."

E-mail cvognar@dallasnews.com