Silent Waters

Silent Waters. Very nice movie. More information at - http://www.netflix.com/WatchNowMovie?movieid=70011223&trkid=203073.

Many movies have been made based on India - Pakistan partition and its effects on the people of Indian sub-continent. No movie has touched the subject in such a unique way that this movie touches.

If we know even little about the brutality and genocide that took place around that time, it is not difficult to see that this story is strongly influenced by some real life incident.

The movie is about a woman who is left behind when her family escapes to India. She continues to live in the village which becomes part of Pakistan. She lives like any other Muslim of the village.

Things get hot when one Sikh among the Sikh delegation starts meeting her. Even today, Pakistan allows Sikhs to visit their sacred places which are now in Pakistan. So, Sikhs do get to visit their sacred places once in a while.

This Sikh gentleman is sure that this Muslim woman is his sister who was left behind when rest of the family fled to India. Encounters between the Sikh and this woman opens up a Pandora's box in that little village. How it affects her son, rest of the village and how the woman reacts to the proposition that she was Sikh's sister make up rest of the movie.

Kiron Kher, as the Muslim woman, fantastic. I think it is her best performance to date.

It is more than 50 years now since that vicious incident happened. The genocide was unimaginable. The whole trains full of dead people traveled from this side of the border to the other side. Trains coming from Pakistan were to be full of Hindus massacred by Pakistanis. Violence only breed violence. Some trains were sent across the border with Muslims slaughtered. Imagine whole trains full of dead people. If there was woman, she was raped before murdered in most of the cases.

This train incident is well documented in many movies and books.But there are many such little known heart wrenching incidents such as men folk killing their own women folk because they felt it was better for their womenfolk to die in honor by their own husbands and fathers than die a violent death after getting raped by mobs. In some cases women were coaxed to commit suicide and in some cases men folk closed their eyes and simply shot their wives and daughters. This movie does not show any of this gore much but all along the movie it becomes clear that this woman was one left to die but somehow refuses to commit suicide by jumping into a well, rescued by some good Muslim man, gets married to him, becomes Muslim and lives like that this Sikh gentleman relentless pursues here and digs into her past.

This movie is going to haunt you for a long time.

Cheers!

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