Ralph's Movie Reviews: THE WATER-BEARER

Friday, April 6, 2007

THE WATER-BEARER

Documentary
Original title: Le Porteur d'Eau
In French and Bahasa with English subtitles

BACKGROUND
Indonesia is a nation of about 17,000 islands in South East Asia. It’s capital is Jakarta and by sea neighbours Singapore, The Philippines and Australia. With a population of over 200 million, it is the world’s fourth most populous country and the one with the most populist Muslim-majority.
Indonesia is a republic having a presidential system with power concentrated in the national government. The President is head of state, commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces and responsible for domestic governance, policy-making and foreign affairs.
Until he was forced to resign from the presidency in May 1998 the country was run as a corrupt dictatorship by Suharto (like most Indonesians, he only has one name) and in 2004, for the first time ever, the people directly voted for the President. Things have much improved for the populace since then.

REVIEW
Gilles Raymond, was active in regional politics when living in Quebec. After spending some time in the Caribbean he eventually wound up on Flores Island in Indonesia. Shocked to learn that many poor villagers had to spend upwards of four hours daily fetching water, he took it upon himself to be the bearer of water with the help of the resident population.

This short documentary (only 50 minutes long) follows him as he organises several communities to bring in potable running water to their village. However his on-screen comments are more about himself than about his project.

CLASSIFICATION

for General Audiences

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my ratings system

I've always thought that telling too much about a movie or warning someone about a "twist" at the end deprives the person the pleasure of seeing it as it unfolds, so I don’t do it. You may not always agree with my rating of course, but at least it is an unbiased opinion unlike some of the full time professional reviewers who are on the studio’s payroll.

A few movies you won’t see any review from me:

Scary movies: I’m the world’s biggest chicken and just hate getting the crap scared out of me. I can handle an unexpected door slam, that kind of thing, but a movie that keeps you on the edge of your seat…not for me. Sorry.
Movies geared to the young teen and pre-teen crowd with dialog comprising mostly of crude remarks, awful jokes and lots of rude, socially unacceptable body noises. "The Spy that Shagged Me" comes to mind. (I wonder if the kids know what the British verb to shag someone really means? They probably do; I bet you it’s the parents who haven’t a clue).
Sometimes Hollywood gets on a roll and they produce a series of movies that are all very much alike. For example movies about the CIA were very popular and so we had The Bourne Identity and Bad Company and The Sum of All Fears. They all had the same basic theme and it becomes repetitive. I will see some, but not all of them.

FYI this is my rating system:

0 stars = Terrible: so bad it’s not worth talking about; in fact, I’d pay you not to go
= Lousy: I actually got up and walked out before the end it was just that bad (no kidding)
= Not so good: thought about walking out but hung in just in case it got better (but it didn’t)
= A so-so good movie: I enjoyed it somewhat but wasn’t all that crazy about it
= A really good movie: I recommend seeing it
= An excellent movie you just got to see! I suggest you put it on your "To Do List" it’s that good.

some favourite websites

For those into it, Nitpickers at

has more movie mistakes than you could ever imagine. My contributions can be seen if you check out the Nitpickers Registry and click on the link Nitpickers Listed by Nitpicker Number, select the group 45,401 - 45,500 and drill down to number 45411. Although I have 56 nitpicks to my credit, some have almost 2,000. You wonder sometimes where they find the time to do it.