I give this film a 10 that I hope will counteract the 7.7 rating at the IMDb. This film is a gem that is rarely seen today at the theaters. It takes place in the southwestern Indian state of Kerala in what appears to be the 1930s.
From its very beginning we understand that the British plantation owner, Henry Moores (played by Linus Roache) is having an affair with his beautiful Indian maid servant, Sajani (played by Nandita Das). Both are married. He to a beautiful English woman who at the start of the film is away in London with their son visiting her father; Sajani to a local villager. Given these personal circumstances and the times and place, a tradition-bound village and vocal demonstrations against the British Raj, we also understand as clearly as the sun traverses the midday sky that their fate is sealed. It is inevitable from the moment they first embraced each other. But rather than experiencing ennui from this foreknowledge, it heightens our involvement as we are drawn into the characters and the drama of their lives. I must also point out the splendid acting of Jennifer Ehle, who plays Moores's wife after she returns with their son to their plantation home. Ehle captures perfectly the duped wife whose female intuitions lead her to the dark truth of her husband.
On a larger scope, this film can be seen in a more complex light as well. Moores symbolizes the hubris and individualism of Western man hell-bent on bending the world to his will through his know-how and his technology. He has seduced Sajani, who perceives him as a liberator, freeing her from her brutal, tradition-bound husband whom she was forced to marry. Moores's know-how is manifested in the film by the building of a road impregnable to the monsoon rains, and his technology symbolized by his pistol, which Moores bestows on his Indian steward, T.K., for T.K.'s complicity in Moores's affair with Sajani. T.K. is played with summit precision and perfection by Rahul Bose, who vacillates between the ancient traditions and codes of his village and the new ways of his boss, Moores, whom T.K. also sees as a liberator from the ancient village traditions. In the end it is T.K. who holds power over Moores.
This individualism had pervaded Western culture for five hundred years and along with the Western scientific/technological dynamo generating a new world is its most pervasive and recognizable hallmark. It has enabled Western man to shuck off the accumulation of thousands of years of cultural accretions and to construct a different world from one bound by traditions and customs. I say here "a different world", not necessarily "a better world". For technology is a double-edged sword. As it liberates us, it also erases our links with the past. And once bereft of the past, humans are left rudderless in the great stream of time.
It is still a very moot point whether the individualism of the modern world will ultimately lead to the Great Debacle. Whether this conclusion to the story of humanity will be as implacable as the fate of Sajani and Moores remains to be seen, but many disturbing events in the world suggest that it may happen. If it does, then humanity will again be flung back to its tribes and its villages, and the heights scaled by its vaunting technology will evoke only vague and distant memories in those tribes-people and in those villagers.
From its very beginning we understand that the British plantation owner, Henry Moores (played by Linus Roache) is having an affair with his beautiful Indian maid servant, Sajani (played by Nandita Das). Both are married. He to a beautiful English woman who at the start of the film is away in London with their son visiting her father; Sajani to a local villager. Given these personal circumstances and the times and place, a tradition-bound village and vocal demonstrations against the British Raj, we also understand as clearly as the sun traverses the midday sky that their fate is sealed. It is inevitable from the moment they first embraced each other. But rather than experiencing ennui from this foreknowledge, it heightens our involvement as we are drawn into the characters and the drama of their lives. I must also point out the splendid acting of Jennifer Ehle, who plays Moores's wife after she returns with their son to their plantation home. Ehle captures perfectly the duped wife whose female intuitions lead her to the dark truth of her husband.
On a larger scope, this film can be seen in a more complex light as well. Moores symbolizes the hubris and individualism of Western man hell-bent on bending the world to his will through his know-how and his technology. He has seduced Sajani, who perceives him as a liberator, freeing her from her brutal, tradition-bound husband whom she was forced to marry. Moores's know-how is manifested in the film by the building of a road impregnable to the monsoon rains, and his technology symbolized by his pistol, which Moores bestows on his Indian steward, T.K., for T.K.'s complicity in Moores's affair with Sajani. T.K. is played with summit precision and perfection by Rahul Bose, who vacillates between the ancient traditions and codes of his village and the new ways of his boss, Moores, whom T.K. also sees as a liberator from the ancient village traditions. In the end it is T.K. who holds power over Moores.
This individualism had pervaded Western culture for five hundred years and along with the Western scientific/technological dynamo generating a new world is its most pervasive and recognizable hallmark. It has enabled Western man to shuck off the accumulation of thousands of years of cultural accretions and to construct a different world from one bound by traditions and customs. I say here "a different world", not necessarily "a better world". For technology is a double-edged sword. As it liberates us, it also erases our links with the past. And once bereft of the past, humans are left rudderless in the great stream of time.
It is still a very moot point whether the individualism of the modern world will ultimately lead to the Great Debacle. Whether this conclusion to the story of humanity will be as implacable as the fate of Sajani and Moores remains to be seen, but many disturbing events in the world suggest that it may happen. If it does, then humanity will again be flung back to its tribes and its villages, and the heights scaled by its vaunting technology will evoke only vague and distant memories in those tribes-people and in those villagers.