Water in Oscar

Finally today the nominations for various categories for Oscars are announced.

Indian-born Canadian Deepa Mehta's 'Water' has been selected among the final five in Best Foreign Language Film Category.

'Water' is last of the trilogy by Deepa Mehta. The others being 'Fire' and 'Earth'. Deepa's movies have always been controversial since they deal with controversial subjects which are generally opposed. 'Water' also went through this controversy, when the shooting started at Varanasi. The sets of the film were burnt and vandalised, forcing Deepa to postpone the shooting of the film indefinitely. Later with a different cast of John Abraham, Lisa Ray she shot the film in Srilanka under the title 'River Moon'.

Some people are up against Deepa's movies. People say that her movies show India in bad taste. But can we forget our past ? Can we say that movies should only show good times ?


I felt very happy since Water has entered the Oscars as a Canadian entry and has made it to the final five, till I opened the Wikipedia page to read more about 'Water' and got disturbed when I read these two snippets -

• Prior to shooting of the film in Sri Lanka, Deepa Mehta decreed that only copies of the script excluding the rape scene of the young widow were to be circulated among the crew. It was feared that either child actor's parents or local authorities would attempt to hinder the scene being shot. A plan was hatched to have child's mother, who was always present with her during shooting, distracted and led away from the set while the key scene was being shot. Senior crew members who were aware of this plan found it highly objectionable and unethical, and expressed their very strong disapproval to producers. Despite the mutiny, Mehta insisted that child artist's mother, an 'uneducated' Sinhalese housewife from small-town Sri Lanka, was not sophisticated enough to understand the true meaning of the scene, and their plan went ahead, causing a considerable amount of disaffection among the crew for several days thereafter. Many in particular felt this action was antithetical to Water's purported pro-women's rights ethos, as well as exploitative in application of a double standard by 'Westerners' shooting in a less-developed country. Crew members were warned not to discuss the incident with the press.
  

If whatever Wikipedia says is true, then it was totally unethical on part of Deepa to carry out such an act. Deepa could have taken some time to convince child actor's mother. When the mother watches the film, she will be in rude shock. Deepa should have played her responsibly.

• The frozen corpse of a real parrot was used in the scene where the young widow a pet parrot in the film. The Sri Lankan animal wranglers and props crew were not able to create a convincing mock-up of a dead parrot, so they finally killed a couple of parrots and brought the frozen corpses to the set in a cooler for use in the scene. A number of key crew members had expressed strong objections to killing a parrot (or parrots) for the scene, so the animal wranglers claimed that they "found" the dead parrots and subsequently frozen them.
  

Killing an animal for the sake of a film ? The parrot could have been given made unconscious for the scene rather than killing.... How can Deepa Mehta, a highly respected movie maker can go to such extents to make a film !!!

Are directors like Deepa only for the sake of winning awards ?