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I love this movie so much

Undescribable Perfection

Pretty Good

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This movie is set in India in the 1920s, when India was still a part of the British Empire. The movie itself, however, was produced in 1984, in a postcolonial world, where the collective judgment is that colonialism was simply wrong. In fact, it is regarded as so wrong that little room is left for subtlety or nuance. The Indians are all portrayed as good in one form or another (religious, moral, polite, kind, etc.), while the British are all portrayed as bad in one form or another (rude, inconsiderate, arrogant, bigoted, etc.), with only three exceptions: Adela, Mrs. Moore, and Fielding. Adela and Mrs. Moore are just setting out for India at the beginning of the movie, so they do not share the prejudices of the British that have been in India for a while. Dr. Aziz makes this explicitly clear when, after he and his friend are almost run over by an automobile full of British citizens, he says that all Englishmen become unpleasant within two years of coming to India, while he gives Englishwomen only six months.Fielding is a special case. He has been in India for some time, and yet he retains his good qualities, being friendly with Indians and treating them with respect. That is so we have someone to identify with. You see, we all like to flatter ourselves that had we lived in some other time and place, we would somehow still have our American, twenty-first century values and sensibilities, and that we would have been moral heroes, refusing to go along with the norms and mores of that place and time. In other words, we are sure that had we been a British subject assigned to a post in India in the early twentieth century, we would have been just like Fielding, refusing to go along with our white countryman in their condemnation of an Indian (Dr. Aziz) who has been charged with attempted rape of a white woman (Adela). Without Fielding to identify with, we would have been adrift.Adela goes bicycle riding by herself, and she decides to explore a seldom used path. It takes her to an abandoned building adorned by sculptures of men and women making love. And here we can detect an obvious Freudian influence. The sculptures arouse repressed sexual desires in Adela that distress her greatly. Then she notices a bunch of monkeys looking at her. Agitated, they start to chase her and she runs away. The monkeys represent her animal passions, and what she is really running away from is her own lust. On a previous evening, she had broken off her engagement with her fiancé, but upon returning, she tells him she has changed her mind and wants to get married. In other words, even though she no longer loves him, she figures it is better to marry than burn. Other Freudian symbolism consists of Aziz having a fever and the sweltering heat of the sun, which are suggestive of sexual heat.When Adela and Mrs. Moore, Adela's prospective future mother-in-law, first arrived in India, they wanted to meet some Indians socially. They got no help in this regard from the British people that lived in India, who were appalled at the idea, but Aziz accidentally made the acquaintance of Mrs. Moore and through her Adela. He is so enamored of them that he invites them to a picnic in which they can visit some mysterious caves. Through one incredible coincidence after another, one by one, many of the people who were invited are eliminated: Fielding arrives too late, a chaperon arranged by Adela's fiancé is dismissed by her, and Mrs. Moore becomes fatigued and remains behind, so that only Aziz, Adela, and a guide arrive at some caves.Aziz runs off to smoke a cigarette. This is nothing but a contrivance, the movie's way of allowing Adela to be alone. She enters a cave by herself. The cave, of course, represents her unconscious. When Aziz finishes his cigarette, he goes looking for her. He stands at the entrance to the cave as if about to enter. Now the cave represents her vagina. She becomes overwhelmed with her forbidden lust for Aziz and bolts, eventually falling down the hillside into some cactus. Just as she was really running from her sexual desires when she ran from the monkeys, so too here she runs from her desire for Aziz and not from Aziz himself. Being hysterical, she so vividly imagines being ravished by Aziz that she believes he actually assaulted her. As a result, charges are brought against Aziz.Every white person thinks Aziz is guilty except Mrs. Moore, who says there is nothing she can do and returns to England (dying on the way), and Fielding, who asserts Aziz's innocence. Adela's fiancé is a judge, but he has to recuse himself. He is replaced by an Indian judge. During the trial, much is made of the fact that Aziz is a widower and therefore deprived of a sexual outlet, except for his occasional visits to brothels or his collection of girlie magazines. Needless to say, nothing similar is said about Adela's being a maiden who is also deprived of a sexual outlet. When Adela is put on the witness stand, she recants her previous testimony, and Aziz is acquitted. At this point, we realize why the judge had to be an Indian. If Aziz had gotten a fair trial from a white judge, this would have been out of keeping with the movie's simplistic formulation: Indians good; British bad.So, as usually happens in a movie in which a man of color is accused of raping a white woman, he turns out to be innocent because the woman is to blame somehow: either the woman lied, was hysterical, or behaved in provocative manner. See, as examples, "Sergeant Rutledge" (1960), "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962), and "Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys" (1976).

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.

I've always loved this film.This film has a lot of truly fascinating character development. Dr. Aziz goes from the kind of easily intimidated and emotionally battered employee that the British must have loved to have as a compliant colonial subject, to a frightened defendant who has had injustice snatch him from his lonely but well-ordered life, to a bitter and empowered man who thinks identifying with the plight of his fellow Indians means he must abandon all friendships with westerners, in particular that of the compassionate Richard Fielding. Sir Alec Guiness plays the minor but important role of Professor Godbole, a man whose beliefs puzzle Fielding. When Aziz has been unjustly accused of raping Adela Quested, a British woman, Fielding wants to mount some kind of campaign, to perform some kind of action on Aziz' behalf. Godbole calmly insists that although he cares about Aziz very much, nothing he or anyone does will matter - the whole thing has been predetermined. This is one of the issues that plays like background music in the film - that of Western views of human action and divine purpose working synergistically versus Eastern views on the same themes - karma versus Christian endeavor. I truly believe 1984 was a year in which the Academy got it right - Amadeus was indeed the best picture. However, this film is a photo-finish second and I highly recommend it.

I enjoyed the film but not the story. I have been to India many times for work and I am fascinated by its history. I realize this isn't a historical film but it did capture the time of the Brit Raj rather well. I also saw some of the typical Western Traveler that gets caught up in the social views and their feeling of pity for the Indian. No need they are a strong people. Anyhow it bugged me that they used Alec Guiness for Godbole. I kept thinking WTH is he doing. He added nothing and it could have been done much better by any of Bollywoods top tier. I just couldn't get over his being there. And the scene at the caves was painful the acting forced. I still have no idea what she was doing they paid no real attention to flesh out what went on with her. A missed opportunity. Anyhow, it is a good movie to see what life was like at the time but the story and directing was pretty bad. Not to mention Alec in his creepy scenes.