Passaggio in India

In 1885 Lord Macaulay in very planned way introduced English as an official language of India, a plan equally dangerous like thousand years of third Reich in Europe. Macaulay himself explained during a speech in Kolkata in 1885 that "I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. He added "with such a high moral, spiritual cultural heritage and ancient Aryan education system (Language Sanskrit) I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of education system of this nation.

However Macaulay's language experiment resulted very strange. It not only fractured the complex Indian society but divided the schools of thought into fraction. In movie Dr.Aziz symbolically represents the agonised face of so called modern educated Indians.

The director of this movie is very talented person who exactly know this problem. Now what exactly happening in the movie is a British young woman fascinated with ideas of elephants, snakes, tropical forests and mysteries is travelling across India. Moreover she is young and deep inside she is contemplating the true meaning of love. While in India she meets Dr. Aziz who on other hand is a product of Macaulay's language experiment. Dr Aziz is an educated person who has nothing to with Indian national movement (background is of decade of 20's) or in other words he is a simple nice Muslim man who do his job, earn comparatively better than other poor Indians and has a good social status in the local community. However he remains depressed with the surrounding atmosphere which is full of dirt, poor people etc. Symbolically he is a face of new crop who thinks and if given a chance, act like elite English. Unfortunately since he is just an average person and not an intellectual, he can not see that a British who is a foreigner in his country do not see any difference between him and other poor. He works hard and do not miss any opportunity to proof that their is a difference and it exist.

Movie reaches to the height of climax when Dr. Aziz gets an opportunity to take Ms Quested to an excursion to Malabar caves. And then comes the most beautiful, suspenseful and artistic scene of the movie. For few moment in that silent lazy afternoon, Ms Quested learn during an exceptional personal interaction (An interaction which was not supposed to be happened between an Indian and a English) about Dr. Aziz's love for his wife who died few years back. Already hypnotised and surprised with the Indian culture she gets locked with a strange feeling when she learn that Dr, Aziz never saw his wife before getting married. Back to her life she never imagined if being in love/marriage with someone whom you have never seen was possible. After all due to her basic human tendency, she for a fraction of moment imagined Dr. Aziz as a perfect man. Her extreme imagination takes her to indefinite trauma and suddenly everything looks ugly, horrible, dark and hopeless. Now gushed with guilt feeling she can not justify her imaginations in a real world.

In case of Dr. Aziz he is again in a gloomy world because Ms Quested without giving any notice is now out of his reach. An innocent human to human interaction becomes a case of racial dominance & national extremism.

Fanatic Indians have coloured it with Indian national moment whereas British are convinced that Indians doesn't matter educated or uneducated are on same line. Ironically Dr. Aziz who is surprised, frustrated due to silence of Miss Quested is no longer an old simple man. He too now believes that English are corrupting his country. Ms. Nobody knows the internal truth.

E.M. Forster's multi-layered masterpiece is on the surface the story of a young woman and her passage through India. On another level it's the story of India's independence from British rule. And there are other themes as well: mysticism, reincarnation, the clash of eastern and western cultures and religion. Only master director David Lean could reveal all the levels and he succeeds in this film.

You can watch this film once for each of the levels and always see something new. The sequence of the trip to the Marabar Caves and what happens there is one of the most mysterious in all of film.

Like Kubrick and Hitchcock, Lean can tell a story yet somehow depict things beneath the surface which ads to the richness of the film and gives it a depth all other films lack. It's not an epic like Lean's masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia but it's still a terrific film.

Alec Guinness is superb as Professsor Godbhole, teacher/guru/who is he really?. With Judy Davis as Adela Quested, Victor Banerjee as Dr. Aziz H. Ahmed, Peggy Ashcroft as Mrs. Moore, and James Fox in a terrific performance as Richard Fielding.

My interest in caves led me to watch this film. A small, but pivotal, part of the film's plot centers on what happens at the Marabar Caves. While the cave segment was a disappointment to me, I was pleasantly surprised by the film as a whole. It was not the grandiose, pretentious cinematic epic I had feared.

"A Passage To India" tells the story of a young British woman and her elderly traveling companion who journey from England to India, at a time when the British still ruled that country. The film's theme centers on British attitudes toward the people of India. Those attitudes can be summarized as: condescending, snobbish, and racist. It was the English vision of cultural superiority over the Indian people that E.M Forster wrote about in his 1924 novel, upon which the screenplay is based. That cultural vision represents a bygone, imperial era that today seems quaint.

The cinematography here is excellent, though perhaps not quite as sweeping or majestic as in some of Director Lean's previous films. What comes through in the visuals is India's spectacular scenery. The film's acting is competent. And I liked the film's original score.

My main complaint is the film's length. It's a two-hour story stretched to fill almost three hours. I would have cut out most, or all, of the crowd and mob scenes because they are not needed, and because they infuse the film with a "cast of thousands" aura that moves the film implicitly in the direction of epic status. Even as is, the film is sufficiently low-key and personal to be enjoyable.

Released in 1985 and directed by David Lean from E.M. Forster's novel, "A Passage to India" is a historical drama/adventure about a young English woman, Adela Quested (Judy Davis), who experiences culture shock when she travels to India circa 1920 to possibly marry her betrothed, a British magistrate (Nigel Havers). Her companion for the sojourn is his mother (Peggy Ashcroft). With a kindly Indian, Dr. Aziz (Victor Banerjee), they take an excursion to the mysterious Marabar Caves. But something strange happens at the caves and Aziz' world is turned upside down when Adela accuses him of a crime. James Fox plays Aziz' English friend while Alec Guinness is on hand as an Indian sage.

This was David Lean's last film and, as far as I'm concerned, it's as great as his other films, like "A Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957), "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) and "Doctor Zhivago" (1965). To appreciate it you have to favor his epic, realistic, not-everything-spelled-out style.

The movie's about the clash of British arrogance & Victorian propriety with a fascinatingly alien and more wild Indian culture. It's thematically similar to 1993's "Sirens," highlighted by Davis' stunning lead performance and only hampered by Guinness' miscasting as an Indian (but that's a minor cavil).

The film runs 164 minutes and was shot in India.

GRADE: A-

***SPOILER ALERT*** (Don't read further unless you've seen the movie)

The movie goes out of its way to show that Aziz is innocent of attempted rape without spelling it out. So what happened to Adela in the caves? She suffered a panic attack due to culture shock and the mounting apprehension of marrying a prim & proper coldfish she doesn't love. The scratches she suffers are from the cacti she runs into while fleeing the caves. Aziz was her subconscious scapegoat. But, give her credit, she was able to resist immense social pressure, realize the truth, and boldly declare it, despite the negative social ramifications.

David Lean ended his illustrious career on a high note with this haunting love song to the exotic & sensual world of India.

The action takes place during the last days of England's rule over colonial England. Much of the emphasis in the movie is placed on the culture clash between the two countrys.

Judy Davis stars in one of her earliest films as a woman who travels to India on what she imagines will be a romantic adventure to meet up with and marry a waiting fiance.

The great Dame Peggy Ashcroft portrays the fiance's mother who accompanies Davis on her "Passage To India".

Alec Guiness is along for the ride in a culture-bending role as a Hindu spiritual man. Guiness's role is in turn played for laughs then for dramatic punch when needed.

The major conflict in the movies arrives from an ill fated tourist jaunt to the Marabar Caves some miles away.

What does or does not happen there becomes a legal and moral crisis that involves all the film's key players as well as the entire city.

The movie is played with sensitivity as well as allowing for the usual David Lean broad strokes of color and light.

It's one of my favorite movies and definitely appealing to more than the "Merchant & Ivory" crowd.