arthur_tafero
Let me preface this review by mentioning that I have nothing but the greatest respect for David Lean and his skills as a master director. I have seen all of his films, and all of Hitchcock's films as well. Each is a master, and each has made one turkey; Hitchcock with "The Paradine Case" and Lean with this film. This movie is beautifully photographed (as all Lean films are), and the actors are first-rate (as they always are in Lean films). The director is one of the best in the business; so what happened? As a character from "Lovers and Other Strangers" would say "So What's the Story Richie?". The story is the culprit. It is just not compelling or strong enough to hold for two and three quarter hours.
Peter Weir did psycho-sexual drama much better years earlier with "Picnic at Hanging Rock". A questionable rape film done by Kurosawa in the fifties, "Rashomon" handles not only two versions of a rape, but three, and is far superior to this film. The lead female character in this film just suffers from "virginitis". But ultimately, this film suffers from one incurable malady; one that Lean films had never experienced before; it is painfully boring.
The story (what little story there is) could have been done in a one-hour special for television; it is that banal. As a matter of fact, a tv soap of the same name later developed with a one hour format. One other thing; Maurice Jarre (one of my favorite film score writers) wrote the worst score of his career for this film. The Indian band in the film made superior music, and you can judge how good that is when you hear it. If you are having trouble sleeping after a breakup, ladies, then this film is for you; it will put you out.
mark.waltz
I've heard it said that class is really the ability to make everybody around you feel comfortable, and if that is indeed true, Dame Peggy Ashcroft's British lady, Mrs. Moore, is the epitome of class, graciousness and ageless beauty. For in this upper class British lady is a true lady, one who respects cultures others than her own by getting to know the traditions and honoring them as best as she can, even removing her shoes before going into an Indian mosque. With her younger traveling companion, the beautiful and young (but somewhat uptight) Miss Quested (Judy Davis), Mrs. Moore ventures to India to see her son whom Miss Quested is engaged to marry. Torn between the beauty of the culture and their curiosity about the Indians they encounter in contrast to the British rule, they befriend an eager Indian doctor (Victor Bannerjee) who offers to take them on a tour to the local mountain range which is both dangerous and beautiful, and when Miss Quested has a strange encounter inside one of the caves on the mountain range, Bannerjee is arrested and accused of assaulting her, resulting in a war of the two cultures with the Indians using this event to express their anger over years of British abuse.The beauty of the Indian countryside is certainly one of the main attractions of this hit epic directed by the legendary David Lean, and while it has its share of flaws, it remains excellent simply because the flaws represent "mystery" which this has plenty of. One of the biggest mysteries comes in the casting of the "vedy British" Sir Alec Guennis whose connection to director Lean goes back four decades. Playing an Indian wise man, he still sounds like Sir Alec Guennis and basically looks like Obi-Wan Kenobi in Muslim garb. Even as Adolf Hitler, I couldn't help but laugh, thinking of his comical role as the blind butler in "Murder By Death", and here too, the temptation to laugh is just too great, even with all of those fantastic performances in the Ealing black comedies and many great dramatic roles still embedded in my memory. Fortunately, his screen time is limited, and with Davis, Bannerjee and the Oscar Winning Ashcroft dominating the scene, his appearance is just a minor distraction.But there are so many other things to praise, whether it be the glorious Maurice Jarre musical score (which sounds like a "British march to India" theme), the wonderful photography and all of those psychological implications in regards to Bannerjee's friendship with Davis, his adoration of the elderly Ashcroft and Davis's encounter with erotic statues out in the middle of nowhere. The train ride, too, is phenomenal, with Bannerjee a bundle of child-like energy as he surprises Moore and Davis in their cabin by showing up on the side as the train crosses a very high trestle. Davis, obviously, is a very complicated and conflicted young woman, and Ashcroft has grown tired of her own culture's bigotry, and you just want to slap the woman who poo-poo's her desire to get to know the locals. "It's a mature of culture", she says, and like Dana Ivey's character in "The Color Purple", I just wanted to shake some decency into her. Their politeness is phony, often silent abhorring, so it makes Mrs. Moore a saint in comparison. This is where I first discovered the very gifted Judy Davis, the brilliant Australian actress I had heard of in regards to the earlier "My Brilliant Career", yet had not yet seen in the cinema. I instantly wanted to see more of her, and other than some supporting roles in delicious character roles, never had the opportunity to due to the lack of choices and her justifiable pickiness in choosing roles. To go from the conflicted Miss Quested to the legendary Judy Garland to the psychotic Santee Kimes (not to mention her roles in "Barton Fink" and "Husbands and Wives", to name a few), I have long wanted to see her on stage. She was admittedly a reluctant star in the making, but when I watch her, I feel that I'm seeing somebody else, not her. Like Helena Bonham Carter, who started off in young lady parts but moved into character roles, she's a true artist, and even if the filming of this for her had its share of issues with director Lean, she comes off unscathed and so totally memorable. Bannerjee's eagerness to please the snooty British might seem as patronizing to some, but this is a person who isn't hiding underneath the skin of who he is with his desire to reach out to human beings for the most part who think of him as beneath them. The chemistry between him and Ashcroft as great friends, even if briefly, is undeniable, and they are a great pair. To watch him turn embittered (but never loosing his humanity after after being publicly humiliated) is a very sad commentary on the inhumanity of the well-to-do upper-crust who really had no reason for taking over, especially since just a few decades later, they would be fighting against one of the greatest evils they'd ever known. That gives the question, "Does evil, disguised as class, really loose the fact that it's evil?" The ending shot of Davis reading a letter from Bannerjee's Dr. Aziz is really quite a commentary on atonement, and for the ability to learn about what real humility is.
petra_ste
Forster has been lucky as far as movie adaptations of his works are concerned. James Ivory did him justice with A Room with a View and especially with the magnificent Howards End, and having your most successful book handled by David Lean is something every novelist would envy.A feast for the eyes - with damp jungles, peaks shrouded in clouds and crystal-blue lakes reflecting the sky like polished mirrors - the movie is a tale of social, racial and sexual tension, as in colonial India a British lady (wrongly) accuses a local doctor of attacking her during a visit to an isolated archaeological site.The female protagonists fare better than their male counterparts. Judy Davis is phenomenal in the lead role of Adela Quested - a nuanced, powerful portrayal of a psychologically distressed individual. Ashcroft is also excellent as Mrs Moore.Banerjee succeeds at making doctor Aziz likable, but it isn't exactly a subtle performance: he appears too childlike, naive and eager to please. Only in the epilogue some much needed bitterness comes through and paints the doctor as something deeper than a saintly scapegoat. More on target is James Fox as the British educator who sides with Aziz against his own compatriots. Alec Guinness, great as he was, is miscast as a Brahmin.Not one of Lean's best works, but still compelling and visually rich.7/10; for a different take (less political, more esoteric) on similar themes - sexual repression, conflict between nature and civilization - see also Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock.
George Aar
The trailers for this film were all about the intrigue of mystical India, elephants, temples, jungle, exotic scenery! And, to be fair, there actually was some of that in the first part of the movie. But it had little to nothing to do with the story they were trying to tell. It was simply a little wallpaper to perk up an otherwise dreary, little story.So the British colonists were snobbish, racist, elitist jerks? Well, maybe that was news in the 20's when the book was written, but I think most anyone with a pulse had figured that out by 1984.And the very title "Passage to India" evokes thoughts of exotic countryside and Indiana Jonesish adventure. Instead we get a few minutes of travelogue scenery and then two hours or more of tepid courtroom drama. It should have been made as a Perry Mason episode ("The Case of the Confused Englishwoman"?) and it would have been a lot more honest.Not impressed...
