Water
Fox Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: April 28, 2006 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
77
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 25 Critic Reviews
Positive:
22
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Village VoiceBill Gallo
This work of gorgeous fury, about the virtual imprisonment of millions of Hindu widows in the years before independence, transforms Mehta's feminist rage into an eloquent testament to the hunger for freedom. Read full review
100
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
Profound, passionate and overflowing with incomparable beauty, Water, like the prior two films in director Deepa Mehta's "Elements" trilogy, celebrates the lives of women who resist marginalization by Indian society. Read full review
100
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
A film with the epic scale and fearless common-sense vision of Water is a revelation. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
Exquisite storytelling, acting and visuals. Read full review
90
VarietyEddie Cockrell
Deftly balancing epic sociopolitical scope with intimate human emotions, all polished to a high technical gloss, Deepa Mehta's Water is a profoundly moving drama. Read full review
90
The New York TimesJeannette Catsoulis
An exquisite film about the institutionalized oppression of an entire class of women and the way patriarchal imperatives inform religious belief. Read full review
90
Washington PostStephen Hunter
Water, set in 1930s India, is something pretty rare in the world of movies: an artistic muckraker. It is superb and strange at once, a discreet and self-disciplined attack dog of a movie. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
The writer-director doesn't raise her voice, even as she firmly condemns the injustice. Water seduces us with its beauty and sorrow. Read full review
80
L.A. WeeklyDavid Chute
Hitches some of the most irresistible conventions of Hindi movie melodrama to an earnest agenda of social protest. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKevin Thomas
As beautiful as it is harrowing. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Mehta and her cameraman Giles Nuttgens capture the area's rich interplay of light and color, land and water, and riches and poverty. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
The stunning Lisa Ray, a Bollywood exile, makes one of the most beautiful widows ever to grace the screen. Vidula Javalgekar gives a memorable turn as the infirm "Auntie." But the real find is Sarala, a Sri Lankan girl who memorized dialogue in a language she does not understand and delivers it with conviction. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleRuthe Stein
Mehta has created the perfect guide to this strange female world. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
As a sign of how stubborn some irrational religious traditions can be, Hindu protesters forced Mehta to close down her Indian location and finish the film in neighboring Sri Lanka. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia Puig
A haunting and disturbing film, set in 1938, about "widow houses." Though occasionally overwrought, it emerges as life-affirming. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The best elements of Water involve the young girl and the experiences seen through her eyes. I would have been content if the entire film had been her story. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeLouise Kennedy
Succeeds in its central goal: to turn a forgotten class of women into real, memorable human beings who deserve a different life. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
In an elemental way, though, the film always works. The acting can be basic, a cross between Bollywood directness and Western nuance, but it has weight. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Lurking just beneath Water's serene, storybook surface is an unmissable, defiant passion. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
A potent feminist protest--all the more so because some of the laws depicted are still in force today. Read full review
67
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
It's infuriating in more ways than one. Yet it's also somehow touching in its melange of melodrama and modernism. Read full review
63
New York PostKyle Smith
Gandhi did save India from the British, but he didn't save India from the Indians, and the horrific subjugation of widows continues there even today. It was only 10 years ago that Mehta encountered the Hindu widow who inspired her film. Read full review
60
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
A powerful drama, albeit a flawed one with a clumsy, didactic script.
58
The A.V. ClubTasha Robinson
Water is gorgeously composed and beautifully shot, with a dogged emphasis on water imagery and symbolism, and a luscious sense for color. It's often profoundly beautiful. But its distanced, calculated attempts to draw sympathy, from its wide-eyed child protagonist to its sad-eyed, personality-free lovers to its fairy-tale ending, all blunt the meaning behind that beauty. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
The movie takes the form of a lackluster women's-prison picture. Read full review
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