Visual Rhetoric of 'One Water Film Documentary' - Essay Example

While the visual scenes and the verbal accompaniments present water as physiologically and spiritually significant, the depletion, improper use, and poor development of the commodity spells a crisis that needs urgent attention. On the whole, the documentary employs one of the most innovative cinematic--visual and verbal--strategies to reach a wider view and attract an appeal to its thematic significance. It opens with the scenes of several people coming together in front of screens to watch awareness-raising movie on the importance of water conservation and how safe-drinking water is crucial (Travis 2).

In this Scenario, the cinematic visual expression sets the psychological stage for the viewer to significantly open up to the following scenes. It captures and captivates the audience attention (Dwyer 1).In other scenarios filmed in different countries, the scenes indicating the differences of clear crystal clean water to dripping in some taps in a country and showing over-exploited dirty water in other countries show the differences in how water is a commodity in some regions and a human right in others (Dwyer 1).

This is further compounded by the narrator’s exposition that while water is misused in affluent quarters, it is struggled for in other places (Travis 2) Moreover, there are scenes where images on how people use or misuse water which further deals with the dilemma of water in development as well as disease acquisition. Some scenes show human populations using various public water points for bathing, going for calls, as well as drinking. Besides, there are scenes where various other pollutants and thrown into water bodies, all which shocks the audience (Travis 2).

Over-exploitation of water is additionally portrayed in other scenes showing the dried out lands bordering the over-exploited Colorado River, which has changed the water movement path (Dwyer 2). The statistical figures showing the urgency with which the death tendency of children in relation to the availability of water in the developing world vis-a-vis the developed nations shows that water crises need to be addressed urgently. It reveals a lack of understanding that many people across the world need to know that usage of polluted water should not be the rule, but the exception (Garcia 1).

In an Indian Desert, Rajasthan, a woman and her child are shown carrying water pots crossing a seemingly dry lake, and a picture of winds transmitting salt onto some agricultural land. This ushers the notions of the extent to which agricultural productivity is enormously affected by lack of water. In Kenya and indeed the entire Sub-Saharan Africa, the picture of how unsafe water causes Malaria, diarrhea and other water born diseases introduces the viewer on the relationship of severity between water and disease micro-bills (Garcia 2).

Indeed, the visual images that illustrate poverty and diseases unfold in various countries as the movie progresses (Dwyer 3). The picture of Indian women carrying pots and fetching water from hand pumps is one such. Then there a scenes indicating that the use of under ground water, leads to sickness, as ground water deficits are characterized with ‘arsenic seepage into wells.’’ What is more, there are scenes showing women walking and crossing through and muddy and sewage-full streams while struggling to protect that precious commodity that