A Passage to India (1984)

 

A Passage to India

“A Passage to India” is David Lean’s last movie. He has been with us for a long time and has several memorable entries on the List. “A Passage to India” may not be his strongest movie, but it is a worthy representative of his career and a suitable swan song.

The story is an adaption of a novel (by E.M. Forster) and clearly a condensation of what is likely a very detailed and complex book. This is evident in the way Lean tries to juggle several themes and narratives, which or may not tie together. I have identified at least four.

Lean loved big cinema. Vistas, colours, busy scenery and outlandish culture. India provides all that and the chance to showcase this appears to have been a big motivation for David Lean. This is a beautiful movie and the setup rivals that of “Lawrence of Arabia”. Even if I did not care about anything else, just to enjoy the pictures would be reason enough to watch the movie.

Secondly, there is a theme about sexual frustration or at least some pent-up psychological issues. Adela Quested (Judy Davis) is a new arrival in India to meet her fiancé, Ronny Heaslop (Nigel Havers), the magistrate of Chandrapore. While eager to meet the “real” India, she is soon overwhelmed by the impressions. Sexual statues, aggressive moneys, echoes in caves and the underwhelming reception by the groom to be. This climaxes when she imagines herself raped. This is clearly an important element of the movie and, I think, is supposed to be key to the story, yet, I do not think it comes across very clearly. A British girls lost in India falls a bit short as a subtext.

Thirdly there is the criminal story. Dr. Aziz (Victor Banerjee) is an Indian doctor who randomly meets and befriends Miss Quested’s companion, the elderly Mrs. Moore (Peggy Ashcroft). When Miss. Quested asks the school principal, Richard Fielding (James Fox) to meet some Indians, Aziz is suggested. Aziz is very excitable and servile and all too pleased to be of service to the British. He sets up a picnic to the Marabar caves which he can hardly afford and while out there, alone with Miss Quested she suddenly disappear, claiming to have bee raped. The British colonial masters are ready to lynch Dr. Aziz in a kangaroo court with Fielding as his only support among the British, when Adele Quested suddenly realizes that she was not raped at all. This is more a story of judicial murder than a criminal case, really, but it is set up as a court drama.

Finally, the court case becomes a proxy for the much larger (and almost unrelated) struggle between the colonial lords and the colonials. India versus Britain. The old world order versus the new and a criticism of the curious western idea of the white mans burden (the obligation of westerners to “help” the ignorant developing world to do the right thing). The British are exceptionally arrogant and the Indians really takes to this case to demonstrate their disgust with the British Raj. It is reflected in Aziz who turns from friendly to disgusted by the British.

My problem with “A Passage to India” is that these four themes individually are very interesting but tie together here a bit oddly, as if the film media is too small for this combo. And despite this overload, the movie seems strangely thin on story. There is plenty of ambience and build-up, but it fizzles out in the end in something not quite satisfying.

This does not change that it is a movie I did enjoy watching (with emphasis on “watching”) and it does demonstrate the craftmanship of David Lean. It is also very much a product of its time, with the post-colonial sweep of the seventies and eighties, the revisionist view of western behaviour and misbehaviour in the rest of the world. I do not want to apologize for these horrific British overlords, but I do think “Ghandi” struck a better balance there and felt a tad more realistic.

A fair recommendation from me.