Cleansed

An odd week, to say the least, in which one sees Sin City one night and Water a day later. It’d be easy to do the trite thing and say that Sin City was very violent while Water was very moving. But it works the other way too. The violence of Water is unspoken and largely unseen; but without the quiet violence of an entire society, not just its men, against widowed women there would be nothing left to say. And without the moving emotional entanglements, no matter how misplaced, of the men and women of Sin City, they’d have nothing to get violent about.

Both films are also equally striking visually, although obviously in very different ways. Water is never less than absolutely gorgeous in a manner that reminded me most of Zeffirelli’s La Traviata. But the wonderful lighting, especially the night scenes, is every bit as artificial as the graphic treatment of Sin City, perhaps more so since it is so obviously intended to look real.

Sin City’s script relied heavily on voice-over, which is often a cop-out on the part of the writer. But for me it worked well, creating in a movie that sense of using one’s imagination to fill in the gaps between panels of a comic.

Best of all, there’s more to come. Two announced sequels to Sin City, and the two previous films in Deepa Mehta's trilogy. Bliss.

Sin City: My rating: 4.5 out of 5

Water: My rating: 5 out of 5