A Passage to India
David Lean (1984)
Adapting E M Forster’s novel for the screen would seem to present a considerable problem. The book’s dramatic centre is a non-event or, at least, an unresolved event – something that corresponds to the unfathomableness of India for the British characters in the story. David Lean hardly overcomes this problem: Adela Quested’s allegation that Dr Aziz tried to rape her in the Marabar Caves is reduced to a matter for resolution in a court of law; and Lean’s predilection for marshalling crowds results in too great an emphasis on the political stir caused by Aziz’s arrest. But A Passage to India is, for most of its one hundred and sixty minutes, a fine film. The rhythm and clarity of the storytelling are, until the closing stages (the ‘Temple’ section of the novel), very satisfying. In the effectively satirical description of colonial 1920s India, the cultural distortions imposed by British government are epitomised by a richly uniformed Indian brass band who swelter through ‘Tea for Two’ at a ‘bridge party’, an absurd social event organised by the British chief administrator. (The natives are invited to the bridge party then ignored by their hosts.) The sharply observed social comedy doesn’t, however, diminish the larger mystery of the setting, which Lean conveys through his use of the local landscape, colours and (especially) weather. His penchant for cosmic imagery is a real strength: the discrepancy between the representatives of a short-lived colonialism and the physical scale and spiritual age of the country containing these representatives is an integral part of the story. (In Lean’s previous film, Ryan’s Daughter, it seemed the characters’ passions were meant to measure up to the gigantic geography of their surroundings; the fact that they didn’t made the movie ludicrous.) Maurice Jarre’s score, too, though overly reminiscent of his Ryan’s Daughter theme, suggests very well the absurd collision of two different cultures and apprehensions of time.
The elderly Mrs Moore (Peggy Ashcroft) and Dr Aziz (Victor Banerjee) first meet in a moonlit mosque and he thinks she’s a ghost: it’s hardly an exaggeration to say that the strength of the two actors’ contrasting emotional expressiveness in this scene gives it a spiritual power. Adela Quested (Judy Davis), newly engaged to Mrs Moore’s son Ronny (Nigel Havers) and full of doubts about it, takes a bicycle ride alone and comes upon a disused temple surrounded by massive statuary of Indian figures in embrace. She is fascinated, then flees, terrified by a horde of monkeys that descends screeching from the temple – the monkeys resemble malign, little, naked men. This fusion of alien, carnal mystery and immediate physical threat vividly predicts the fear that we assume overwhelms Adela in the Marabar Caves (even though the sequence there, perhaps because you expect much from it, delivers less than the earlier show of panic). The standard objection that Judy Davis is too attractive to play Adela seems hardly valid: she’s made up in such a way that you can accept she would have been deemed unbeautiful by both the British and Indian communities of the time. Davis may be too charming: Adela’s desire ‘to see the real India’ comes across as the expression of a reasonably enlightened and modern sensibility rather than the raw, earnest lack of humour that characterises Forster’s Miss Quested. Davis is also vocally rather muted – perhaps a slight unease with the English accent causes her to blur a few lines. But her great alertness and sensitivity as an actress help to reveal Adela’s neurotic depths sympathetically and surprisingly: the young woman she creates is far from a foolish virgin. (It’s refreshing to find a surprising characterisation in a David Lean film.) Judy Davis gives a terrific tension to the courtroom climax – a tension it needs. As Aziz, Victor Banerjee occasionally fails, perhaps through over-eagerness, to make the most of his comic opportunities but he is beautifully persuasive in emotional extremity.
Professor Godbole calls Mrs Moore ‘an old soul’ – that is, she’s had many incarnations. Peggy Ashcroft’s artistry illuminates the phrase in both this Eastern sense and the more colloquial Western one. Mrs Moore may be nearer to God than the other British characters but she’s also nearer to death; she’s both receptive to, and intimidated by, the experience of India. Ashcroft’s radiance as a performer allows you to believe in Mrs Moore as a figure of spiritual authority. Her plain-speaking, time-bound fearfulness and simple physical tiredness make her a real, vulnerable human being. James Fox embodies the fair-mindedness of the schoolmaster Fielding easily and straightforwardly. Fox isn’t a powerful actor but he’s likeable here, even when he’s wooden: you root for this Englishman abroad with his decent, rather ineffectual determination to see justice done. It’s a relief that the British actors playing colonial grotesques mostly do so with tact, especially Richard Wilson as the chief administrator. Among the Indians, Saeed Jaffrey is outstanding as the Hamidullah, Aziz’s rather two-faced mentor. There’s one major disappointment in the acting – and from the least expected quarter. As the Hindu professor Godbole, Alec Guinness fails to suggest a mind that has cultivated transcendence of Western time and rationality. He makes Godbole goodness-gracious-me comical. (Guinness is the only white actor playing an Indian so his contribution seems doubly anomalous.) The cast also includes Michael Culver (working hard to sustain a Scottish accent), Antonia Pemberton, Clive Swift, Ann Firbank, Art Malik, Roshan Seth and Sandra Hotz.
Photographed by Ernest Day; production design by John Box. The adaptation is by David Lean, who also – and fittingly for this, his last film – edited. (The credits perhaps reflect his order of priorities: the screenplay is a separate credit, subsidiary to ‘Directed and edited by David Lean’.)
[1990s]