The Assam Garden

This unpretentious little gem came out around the same time as David Lean's PASSAGE TO India, and has been unfairly overshadowed by the blockbuster. I was charmed by the quiet, sensitive, yet emotionally charged portrayal of how an insecure, aggressive widow of a tea garden manager reluctantly develops an affectionate relationship with an Indian housewife and her family. What I found particularly good was that the Indian housewife, played excellently by Madhur Jaffrey, is no impossible goody-goody, but as much a human being with likes, dislikes and prejudices as the widow played by Deborah Kerr. There is also the sad irony of the grandchildren of the Indian family inevitably leaving their 'Indianness' behind in favour of a British lifestyle. Strongly recommended for those in the mood for subtlety and understatement. And it should be watched with Lean's PASSAGE TO India for fruitful comparisons. To my mind, and I'm probably in a minority of one, THE ASSAM GARDEN is the better of the two films. I once possessed a video recording of it, which is now the property of the Film Studies Department of Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India.

The film marks Deborah Kerr's final feature film appearance. She plays an English woman who spent her young adulthood with her now-dead husband in India where they ran a tea plantation. Back in England, she has always felt out of place. The husband spent his UK years building an exotic garden in homage to his years in India. Kerr slaves to maintain the garden, but it's more than just the garden she's trying to preserve.

She meets an Indian woman (Madhur Jaffrey) who lives in the village and who longs to return to India. The immigrant starts to help Kerr in the garden and the two women form an odd bond because of their Indian "roots," though each woman's India is a very different place and likely does not even exist anymore. Kerr's memories of the waning days of colonial India and Jaffrey's memories of quaint village life are just that: memories of long-lost worlds. In the end, one of the women succumbs to the lure of memory and leaves the garden.

Excellent performance by both actresses.