Joshy Joseph’s ‘Walking Over Water’ is neither fact, fiction, nor confession. It’s a filmmaker’s walk of faith.
The men held on for dear life.
The small boat rose and fell on mile-high waves.
Rain lashed like a thousand Roman whips.
Lightning lit the dark sea.
They saw a figure on the water, serene as the storm’s eye.
“If that’s you, Lord, let me come to you,” Peter called, his voice raw over the waves.
“Come.”
He swung his legs over the boat’s edge and stepped onto the water.
A few steps.
Then the wind hit. Fear gripped him. He began to sink, crying out.
Jesus grabbed his hand.
“You of little faith. Why did you doubt?”
××××××
Any act of creation demands faith. For the longest time, I could never stop myself from mentally adding the adjective “blind” in front of faith.
Faith is groundless. Baseless. It’s a leap. It’s got nothing to stand on. Yet, just like love, faith is a choice.
The conscious willingness to suspend disbelief is key to all art, whether you’re giving or receiving. ‘Walking Over Water’ is a film that asks the viewer to step into uncertainty. A docu-drama-auto-fiction that defies categorisation, it treads between immersion and interactivity. It leaves you wondering, “What is the movie about?”
People are silent. A city speaks. Scenes abound in inaction. Faces are playgrounds. Motion is withheld. Dialogue is sparse.
Yet sound speaks volumes. Story is felt, never told.
‘Walking Over Water’ treats your expectations with disdain and all you can do is sit with it.
××××××
I read the Bible cover to cover when I was six, the same year I was described as a pessimist. I didn’t know what the word meant. But when I found out, I had no problem with the description.
×××××××
In the left back seat is CK Janu, “Mother Forest”, the adivasi leader who led protests for half a century, went to jail, endured torture, and won land for tens of thousands of indigenous people.
In the driver’s seat is Fr. Augustin Vatolly. The turbulent priest who shook both church and state. He’s teetered on the edge of forsaking the cassock more times than one can count, both by choice and circumstance.
Joshy Joseph sits in the right front seat, erstwhile Films Division director, a lifetime spent wrestling bureaucracy into submission, and making films that left a mark. By his own admission, it required being “a cultural gunda.”
In the right back seat is me, king of the nobodies, tightly gripping the handle above the window, awestruck and very carsick.
×××××
We reached Kozhikode, the literature city. While Leader Janu would continue onward to Wayanad, the rest three of us were to attend the memorial of Dr. VC Harris.
Dr. Harris, beloved professor, film theorist and critic, activist, director and actor of plays, and countless other roles in a life too short, yet impossibly full.
A student described him as a “lesson in democracy, debate, deconstruction and revolution.”
His memorial was planned by Jamal ikka and a circle of other close friends.
On the agenda was a panel discussion and a screening of ‘Walking Over Water.’
It fits the occasion, because Professor Harris famously had “an utter disregard for texts with fixed meanings.”
×××××××
The film starts with a reference to the Voyager missions. Earth’s giant leaps into the high skies.
The visuals open with Pope Francis consoling Kerala after an Act of God.
We then see Ozu, the boy hero.
There’s an indifference in him. The kind that comes from a lifetime of never taking sides.
Between truth and make-believe. Between nurtured ideals and lived reality.
Between father and mother.
We see his father hiding behind the camera. Appa is very much at home in a Kolkata stand-and-drink theka, sipping transparent liquid from a transparent glass, grabbing from the communal chola plate.
The mother lies in bed, her mind reliving better and worse. She reaches for a Bible, then puts it back without opening.
Ozu’s amma is a filmmaker’s wife, believing that fiction is sin and films are an abomination. To her, film reels evoke fever dreams of flying scrolls carrying curses.
Appa is a filmmaker who believes cinema is God’s work. Jesus told parables; he makes movies.
Ozu, a son just tired of all the bullshit born into.
In his bag he carries a relic, a black coffee mug, the sole survivor of countless domestic storms.
There’s no shortage of conflict. Or characters.
Prashanti. Ozu’s fictional didi his father conjured. Part listener, part device, part ghost in the story’s machine.
Mahashweta Devi. Mother of Fiction asked to play mediator between Ozu and Appa. Caught between the father’s lens and the boy’s silence.
M N Vijayan. The mighty orator-writer whose opening line in a speech became his last words.
Pope Francis. Donald Trump.
Voyagers. Aliens. America. Russia. Chutney. Clapboard.
Kolkata. Hooghly. Its two bridges.
Kolkata, seen through Manesh Madhavan’s lens, is pure cinematic awe.
On grainy 8mm film, Ozu returns as a child. His smile then was delightful, as wide as his face. It lingered in the air. Yet now it seems somehow lost in time.
Like the river, the film drifts between choppy movement and deep stillness, and the soundscape is the one constant anchor.
Life. Religion. Story. Truth. Fiction. Action. Inaction. Temporary escape. Eternal damnation. Cold War. Hot Hell.
‘Walking Over Water’ refuses to be a vehicle for narrative. It’s a mirror maze for interpretation.
We step beyond the firm ground of fact, way beyond the squelchy marsh of fiction, to the flowing waters of experience.
The film is a multitude of metaphors, each dueling for its own meaning.
Ask for no sign.
Seeing is believing. Meaning is in the making.
And the reward for faith is revelation.
×××××××
When I reached the last book, The Book of Revelation, the stories had ended. So had the lessons. All that remained were visions.
My six-year-old eyes widened.
Meta description:
A personal reflection on Joshy Joseph’s ‘Walking Over Water’, a docu-drama-auto-fiction that refuses structure, demands faith, and rewards those willing to step beyond fact, fiction, and fear.
Author Bio :
Sarat Alex
Once ad-scorched in Mumbai, Sarat Alex drifted to Aluva and dissolved into the Periyar, where he swims daily and plots quietly. He makes pitch decks for startups he’ll never start, watches films he’ll never make, and reads books he won’t write. Unless he does.
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