David Lean’s A Passage to India, from the literary classic by E.M. Forster, is one of the best screen adaptations of a novel you are ever going to see. Much like Lean’s other classics like Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965), A Passage to India is told on an epic scale.
To celebrate what would’ve been Lean’s 100th birthday, Sony has released a two-disc special edition that’s a marked upgrade over the previous bare bones version.
The film is set during the period of the Indian independence movement during British rule. It begins with the arrival in India of a British woman, Miss Adela Quested (Judy Davis), who is joining her fiancée, a city magistrate named Ronny Heaslop (Nigel Havers). She and Ronny's mother, Mrs. Moore (Peggy Ashcroft), befriend an Indian doctor, Aziz H. Ahmed (Victor Banerjee).
Dr. Aziz meets Mrs. Moore for the first time in the moonlight at an abandoned mosque on the river Ganges, and he soon finds that Mrs. Moore possesses a sensitivity and unprejudiced attitude to native Indians. When Mrs. Moore and Miss Quested profess an interest in seeing "the real India" as opposed to the snobbish attitude Ronnie and his friends exemplify, Aziz offers to host an excursion to the Marabar Caves.
The outing goes well until the two women begin exploring the caves. Mrs. Moore experiences an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia and fear which forces her to stay outside the caves. Miss Quested and Aziz go on alone accompanied only by an Indian guide.
Aziz leaves her for a moment and she wanders, alone, into one of the caves. Moments later, she flees the cave in a panic and is discovered running headlong down the hill, bloody and crazed. Aziz is immediately jailed to await trial for attempted rape.
In the original novel, it is never completely clear what happened to Miss Quested and Lean leaves that ambiguity in the film. Of course with film being the visual medium it is; one can be left with a stronger impression that they know whether or not Aziz tried to rape Miss Quested. The second half of the film deals with primarily the trial and the aftermath.
Lean gives one numerous sequences that set both of his central female characters firmly in our minds. Miss Quested is curious and has a sense of adventure in her that is painfully stifled by her stuffy husband-to-be Ronny. In one of the best scenes of the film, Lean shows Miss Quested wandering into the erotic ruins of a temple then being scared away by monkeys.
Without any dialogue, we know immediately that she is sexually and emotionally repressed, much like the majority of the other Brits. Mrs. Moore is a warm soul who truly believes in helping others but knows that she is closer to the end of her life rather than the beginning.
Peggy Ashcroft would win Best Supporting Actress for her work here. There is also the exception to British snobbery in the form of local professor Richard Fielding (James Fox) and the strange Indian Professor Godbole (Alec Guiness) who has the perfect answer to every question or situation.
For a film that runs nearly three hours, A Passage to India moves quickly with a very real sense of character and depth. There are many grand moments where you are blown away visually but you are always grounded to the fact that these are flesh and blood characters struggling to connect and communicate with each other. People are judged or in this film misjudged by the slightest thing.
You’ll never think something as random as a back collar stud could be so important but it is here. Lean shows England’s rule of India as a borderline racist regime but makes it a point to show that there are some exceptions. The acting is mostly flawless and unflashy throughout with the surprise exception being Guiness who, at times, plays Godbole as too much of a far out nut to be taken seriously.
Then you also have the glaring problem that we are presented with a British actor playing an Indian. Guiness, a Lean veteran who was frequently at odds with the director, actually remarked after the tumultuous shoot with Lean that it was the worst part he ever played.
Lean hadn’t directed a film since the critical and commercial failure of Ryan’s Daughter fourteen years earlier in 1970. He is in complete control of his craft here for what would be his last film before passing away in 1991.
The India that we see here is beautiful, picturesque, yet mysterious as personified by the Marabar Caves. The ending is different than the book but is slightly more hopeful. Purists of the novel might complain that it changes the tone of what Forster had intended but as a film, it leaves one with a rich, complete feeling that time can heel old wounds.
There is an informative commentary by producer Richard Goodwin as well as a six-part documentary lasting a little over an hour and six minutes that includes “E.M. Forster: Profile of an Author,” “An Epic Takes Shape,” “An Indian Affair,” “Only Connect: A Vision of India,” “Casting a Classic,” and “David Lean: Shooting with the Master.” There is also an eight minute clip of an interview Lean did after the film was released entitled “Reflections of David Lean.”
A Passage to India would be David Lean’s final film but an epic triumph that we don’t see anymore in today’s films. It is a story told on a grand scale with no CGI and no special effects but rather real, flawed humans trying to connect with each other.
A Passage To India (2-Disc Collector's Edition) is now available at Amazon . As of yet, there is not a release date for the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
There are currently no comments for this article. Be the first to comment! (no registration required)