Inside Deepa Mehta’s Elemental Trilogy
A BINDIEWOOD COLUMN
By Rachel Astarte Piccione

I remember being deeply moved when I first saw Deepa Mehta’s films Fire (1996) and 1947: Earth (1998). Moved enough, in fact, to purchase the DVDs and host screenings for those of my friends who had never seen them. Both films are unapologetically real in their portrayal of human experience. And although they focus on Indian culture and history, they remain appealing to international audiences. Why? I’ve never been good at math, but the challenge of finding the universal common denominator between these films intrigued me. I wanted to dig deeper to discover what bound them together and why Deepa Mehta made them the way she did.

Now that Water -- the third film in Mehta’s elemental trilogy -- has been released, it’s apparent there are significant connections beyond the titles. The most obvious is that all three films have been considered wildly controversial: Fire for its ground-breaking portrayal of lesbianism in Indian society, Earth for its stark look at the devastation during the India-Pakistan Partition, and now Water, which opens the doors to a widows’ ashram and gives audiences a chance to see into their lives in society-imposed exile. The first two films were protested and banned across India, and the third was forced to stop production for several years due to oftentimes violent objections from Hindu fundamentalists.

The commonality does not stop there, although one can see how all the elements come together with this further observation: The stories of Fire, Earth, and Water center on passionate and sometimes defiant women who are forced into situations beyond their immediate control. Each film scoops us in and gives us an opportunity to see these women grapple with life choices in their new and often terrifying worlds. I asked Deepa Mehta if this had been her plan from the beginning. Amazingly, it wasn’t. “I hadn’t thought of making a trilogy until I was halfway through making Fire,” she said. “I picked up a book by Bapsi Sidhwa called Cracking India...just by chance.” On the back of the book was a quote that deeply influenced her: “All wars are fought on women’s bodies.”

The elements truly began to fall into place for Mehta then. She recalls that “eleven years earlier I had come in contact with a widows’ ashram when I was filming in Varanasi -- widows whose heads are shorn and who live their lives as complete ascetics -- for the first time. Somewhere in the back of my mind was that image of those widows. I actually saw what [eight-year-old widow] Chuyia sees [in Water]. That had stayed with me.”

It was at this point Mehta decided to explore three subjects that she felt were important. As a result, Fire became about the politics of sexuality. Earth dealt with the politics of war. And Water, she says, is the politics of religion.

So, was politics the common denominator in Deepa Mehta’s trilogy? Was conflict -- both within the films themselves and surrounding their production -- the collective element that made these films globally captivating? Just when I thought I had the pattern pegged, I had to think again. I realize that Deepa Mehta is not a political filmmaker; she is a storyteller. True, the stories she chooses to tell are ones that shake up the status quo. They hold mirrors up to society and up to ourselves as individuals.

However, my search didn’t stop there. As it happens, this desire to bring about public and personal awareness was not Deepa Mehta’s core motivation. It was something even more universal. “What drives me is curiosity,” she says.

It was this drive that urged her toward the last film in the trilogy. “Water came about because there was inherent curiosity [about] the conflict between our conscience and our faith. That to me is an extremely important question for myself...in an increasingly intolerant world. I’m still seeking it.”

So there was my answer. It suddenly became clear to me why Earth, Fire, and Water are able to reach beyond borders, even beyond genders: Curiosity impelled Deepa Mehta to make these films, and answering the deeper questions of our lives -- whatever they may be -- is something we can all relate to.

Images Courtesy Deepa Mehta