A Passage to India Synopsis |Appreciation |Afterthoughts
1984 Color 162 mins
Produced by Goldwyn Films
Written and Directed by David Lean (based on the novel of the same name by E.M. Foster and the play by Sansa Lamar Rowe) Cinematography by Ernest Day Main Cast Judy Davis (as Edra Quest) Victor Banerjee (as Aziz Ahmad) Peytzai Bannaji (as Aziz Ahmad) Davis (as Edra Quest) Victor Banerjee (as Aziz Ahmed) Peggy Ashcroft (as Mrs. Moore) James Fox (as Fielding) Alec Guinness (as Goldberg) Nigel Havis (as Lonnie)
The film won two Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress and Best Composition at the 1985 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and two Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Picture at the New York Film Critics Association. The film won two Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress and Best Composition in 1985, the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Picture and Best Director, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association
Synopsis
In the 1820s, an Englishwoman, Miss Eldrae Cuesta, travels from London with her fiancé, Lonnie's mother, Mrs. Moore, to visit Lonnie in India. India was a British colony at the time. Lonnie was a judge in the Indian city of Chandrapur.
The two women traveled a long way to their destination in Chandrapur. Along the way, the endless fields, colorful and exotic scenery attracted them. Mrs. Moore, in her late seventies but with an open mind, is friendly towards India and longs for a real understanding of it. Ella also wants to know the "real India", but with the curiosity of a Westerner who has never left England.
But since arriving in India, they have been advised by almost all the local Brits not to socialize with Indians, saying that "East and West are different, it's a cultural thing". Ronnie also became condescending and bureaucratic when he arrived in India. In fact all the British officials in India did. They did not give a damn about Indians, but lived in the narrow circle of the British Club, and still acted according to the customs of the British Empire. Mrs. Moore is unimpressed by the racial prejudice of her countrymen, believing it to be due to power and superiority.
On a moonlit night, Mrs. Moore slipped out of the Englishman's Club to take a walk alone, and unknowingly walked into the Islamic mosque. In the moonlight, the great domes and arches of the building, the linden trees and fallen leaves in the gardens, and the sparkling water in the Ganges are interspersed, forming a beautiful and sacred picture. She meets Aziz Ahmed, an Indian doctor. Aziz is a middle-aged widower, warm and sincere, and after a little contact with Mrs. Moore, he felt that she was completely different from those local bossy official women. Aziz tells her that the Ganges is swarming with crocodiles and sometimes floating with dead people. Mrs. Moore is incredulous that beauty and ugliness can mix so wonderfully.
Fielding, the principal of the public school in Chandrapur, is an enlightened Englishman who has always argued that the English should communicate with the Indians. Learning that Mrs. Moore and Aidra want to learn about India, he invites them to meet with Aziz and a Brahmin scholar, Godbole, at his house. Aziz is touched by the sincerity of these Englishmen and enthusiastically offers to take them on a tour of the famous Malabar stone caves. Lonnie is furious that his mother and fiancée are associating with Indians, and his racial prejudice frustrates Mrs. Moore and stings Aidra. Aidra, in light of her growing differences with Lonnie, proposes to break off the engagement. Ronnie is stunned by this.
One day, Aidra is out on her bicycle and inadvertently arrives at the ruins of an old temple. Only to see images of the rejoicing Buddha in various shapes in the weeds, and wild swarms of monkeys in the trees coming at her, Aidra is so frightened that she quickly leaves. At night, she remembers the statue of Buddha and her mind wanders, and she takes it upon herself to make amends with Lonnie again.
Aziz's bold suggestion to swim in a rocky cave puts himself in an awkward position, for which he gets sick in a hurry. Luckily, his friends help him prepare tables, chairs, cutlery, food, and transportation so that his suggestion can become a reality.
On the day of the trip, Aziz and his friends arrived at the train station at dawn with their bags, fearing that they would miss the start of the journey. The two British guests of honor, who were never up that early, arrived on time. Ronnie asks orderly Anton to escort Mrs. Moore and Edra on their trip, but Edra sends Anton away. Fielding and Godbole had agreed to join the trip, but Godbole missed the train because his morning prayers were too long. In fact, Godbole did not approve of the trip, but he did not say so explicitly. Aziz was very disappointed.
When the train arrived at the foot of the rocky mountain, Aziz had already prepared an elephant for his guests to carry them up the mountain, with a band playing music along the way. Nearby villagers followed the elephant to watch the fun. The group is heading towards the Malabar Caves in a big way.
In fact, Malabar caves are just an empty cave, there is no Buddha, no reliefs, and no religious color, their only value is only in the old monuments. However, the pressure of the caves is not for everyone - especially those who are in some kind of fragile state.
Travelers and spectators enter the eerie caves in droves. The cave echoes so loudly that even as everyone holds their breath they can hear the thunder-like sound. Aziz mischievously shouted "Mrs. Moore," which scared Mrs. Moore to the point of dizziness. She hurried out of the cave to rest. When the people went on to see the second cave, Mrs. Moore did not follow them and suggested that not so many people should enter the cave at the same time.
Aziz and the tour guide lead the three of them, with Aziz pulling Edra upwards. Aidra suddenly asks Aziz if he loves his wife. Aziz says that the two had never even met before their marriage, but since they are man and woman and young, they are very affectionate. Aidra then asks him if he has any other women besides his wife. Aziz was embarrassed and excused himself by ducking away for a cigarette to calm himself down. Aidra waited for a while and then went into the cave on her own. By the time Aziz finished his cigarette, Aidra was nowhere to be seen. He urgently went to the mouths of the caves and called her name. At this time, Aidra saw Aziz's figure in the dark cave, heard the echo of his name, suddenly impulsive ......
Then, only to see Aidra wildly run down the mountain, she was all bruised, hysterical and crying and shaking, said Aziz wanted to molest her.
Things took a sharp turn for the worse. Before Aziz could realize what was going on, he was arrested by the police for attempting to **** a white man. Neither Fielding nor Mrs. Moore believed Aziz would do such a thing. The natives who knew Aziz well also thought that the honest doctor must have been wrongly accused. This incident almost brings about a head-on conflict between the Indians and the British.
Fielding runs around to clear Aziz's name, but in vain. Godbole takes a supercilious attitude as he believes that no matter how hard he tries, the result will be the same. Mrs. Moore is so devastated and exhausted that she leaves Chandrapur sadly, having already ordered her return ticket. Godbole blessed her silently with folded hands at the railway station. Before reaching London, however, she died on board. A sea burial was held in her honor.
The colonial authorities believed that people of color had always coveted white women, and that Aziz was all the more motivated to commit the crime because several magazines with semi- *** films of women were found under his bed at home, and he had written to a friend who ran a brothel in Calcutta about wanting to see a striptease. And the binoculars of Aidra, which he picked up at the entrance of the Malabar stone cave, are said to be his murder weapon, and Anton's being stumped away by Aidra is said to be Aziz's premeditation.
Aziz's friends get him a famous lawyer from Calcutta who is an advocate of freedom movement. But the lawyer doesn't work as things take another dramatic turn.
On his way to court, Aidullah's car was surrounded by angry crowds, with people wearing monkey costumes and putting their faces on the windows to make strange faces. Edra walked to the court in a state of dismay. Outside the courtroom, the crowd protested against Lonnie's sending the witness Mrs. Moore away, chanting "Mrs. Moore"; outside the window came the faint sound of thunder; indoors, stuffy and hot. It was as if Edra were in a cave of stone again. When questioned by the prosecutor, she said that it was not Aziz who had suggested going into the cave alone with Aziz, but Mrs. Moore, and that Aziz had not in fact gone into the cave. She then dropped the charges. Aziz was acquitted. The crowd lifted Aziz up like a hero and celebrated his victory.
Aidra is despised by both whites and Indians, and only Fielding takes her in and sees her off.
A kindly passenger on the ship telegraphs Fielding about Mrs. Moore's death. Fielding can't bear to inform Aziz of the sad news while he's in high spirits, so he says only one other thing: he asks him to drop his claim against Aidra. Fielding argues that the whole incident was actually caused by racists fanning the flames, and that Aidra was taken advantage of, but it's good that she knows better. Aziz is furious to hear this and says that the British are still on the side of the British after all.
Aziz gave up his claim and moved to a remote mountainous region far from British rule to practice medicine. Some years later, Fielding took his new wife, Mrs. Moore's daughter, to visit Aziz in the mountains of India. Aziz was very touched. The shadow of the Malabar incident began to fade.
One day, alone in London, Edra received a letter from Aziz, which said that the shadow of the Malabar incident has gradually faded in his heart, he told Edra that he had moved to the mountains to work, where the snow is falling. Aidra, with mixed feelings, looked up at the window, where the rain was beating on the glass windows and brick roofs, and the sound of thunder could be heard.
The nightmare of the India trip was finally over.
Testimonials
British director David Lean rocked the movie industry with such classics as Hate to Meet You (1945), Tears of a Lone Star (1946), Orphan of the Mist (1948), Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and Doctor Zhivago (1965). (1965) and Dr. Zhivago (1965) shook the movie world. After Ryan's Daughter (1970), he remained silent for 14 years, only to return in 1984 to direct his last film. A Passage to India was his last film, and in April 1991 the master filmmaker passed away. Although "A Passage to India" is not as classic as the above card, but it is also popular, won the Academy of Motion Picture Academy Award 11 nominations that year, and the number of nominations of the year "Mozart" is comparable.
There's a reason why David Lean chose A Passage to India as his first play. British author E.M. Forster's novel A Passage to India was published in 1924 and adapted for the stage in 1960. Many filmmakers wanted to bring it to the screen. Indian film director Satyajit Raye wanted to make a movie about it in the 1960s, but for various reasons it didn't happen. 1970, Forster agreed to British producer John Bradburne bringing A Passage to India to the screen. Unexpectedly, Foster died before he could sign the deal. It took another dozen years before Bradburne bought the rights and raised enough money. Some companies would not invest in the film until there was *** footage of the caves, others would not allow Peggy Ashcroft, a 77-year-old actress, to play Mrs. Moore. Anyway, by the time everything was in place, it was the 1980s. Bradburne brought in David Lean, and filming began at the end of 1983 and was completed by the end of 1984.
Foster's novels are full of humanism. Other novels of his that have been brought to the screen include A Room with a View and Howards End. In A Passage to India, the British colonizers are full of racial prejudice and arrogance, and the Indians are kind and sincere, but also very naive. The two are full of contradictions, a divide that was not formed or bridged in a day. David Lean has brought the novel to the screen, 80% faithful to the original, though he has greatly enhanced the original's lashing of British colonial rule.
Since the book A Passage to India was published, critics and readers alike have speculated about what happened in the Malabar caves and whether Aziz *** Aidra or not. The Malabar Caves section is the *** of the book, yet the book is cryptic and doesn't explicitly state what happened, leaving the question a mystery for a long time. David Lean's biggest change to the original book, and a more direct attack on British colonial rule than the original, is to tell the audience explicitly that the Cave of the Rock incident was a wrongful death, the result of racial prejudice on the part of the colonizers. The context of the film's account is as follows: (1) Prior to that time Aidra had had sexual urges when she saw the Jolly Buddha and the group of monkeys; (2) it was Aidra who sent Anton away, not Aziz who stood him up, as Anton testified in the courtroom; (3) it was Mrs. Moore who suggested to Aziz and Aidra that they not go in to the cave with a lot of other people, not Aziz who had a premeditated plan to ditch the crowd as the courtroom claimed; and (4) it was Aidra taking the initiative to ask Aziz questions about his love life; (5) after Aidra ran down the hill, Aziz did not realize she had gone down the hill and called out to her at the entrance of one of the rocky caves; and (6) when the court said that Aziz used the binoculars to knock down Aidra in an attempt to be violent, in fact, Aziz picked up the binoculars in the entrance of the cave after Aidra had run down the hill in a frenzy. The most crucial shot is when Aidra goes into the cave alone and sees Aziz's figure at the entrance in the darkness, and he yells in, "Ms. Quist!" Aidra doesn't respond, but the expression on her face gives the impression that she is in a state of mental turmoil, in the same mental state she was in when she saw the Jubilee Buddha prior to this. A shot immediately follows of a stream of water rushing out of a duel at the edge of a pool (which is actually an elephant frolicking in the pool). This metaphor suggests the physical changes in Aidra at this point. The audience has reason to believe that it is all due to Edra's own sexual fantasies (of course, fueled by the racially prejudiced people around her). This justifies the sudden withdrawal of the charges by Ella in the court.
A Passage to India, like so many of David Lean's films, is a portrait of people far from home in a foreign land whose perceptions of the world and of themselves are tested by a single trip. Mrs. Moore and Edra go to India with the intention of learning about the Orient, and as a result, one dies of exhaustion and the other returns to England in disrepute. It was a disappointing trip for Mrs. Moore. She has just arrived at the Chandrapur Railway Station and sees her son Lonnie, however Lonnie is not here specifically to pick her up, he is mainly here to pick up his superior officer. Ronnie's condescension towards the locals and his fawning flattery of his superiors made her uncomfortable. The complete retention of the British Empire set of customs in the Englishmen's club, where every event begins with a standing ovation and the singing of "God Save the King," overwhelms her. When she spoke to her compatriots about the lack of contact with the natives, they actually replied, "That's lucky for you!" At the garden party she asks the Indian noblewoman to speak a few words of Hindi for her, but all she hears are exotic words like "Hyde Park" and "Waterloo". Fortunately, Fielding invites her and Edra to his home and introduces them to two local intellectuals, Godbole and Aziz, but Lonnie is furious. Aidra is confused when she proposes to break off her engagement with Lonnie and then resume it soon after. The opportunity to visit the Malabar Caves is not easy to come by, and then an unexpected incident occurs that deepens the conflict between the Indians and the British, a series of discomforts that is indeed difficult for an elderly person in her seventies to bear. The good Mrs. Moore paid for it with her life.
For Edra, it was a journey of misfortune. Her own frailty could not withstand the onslaught of Eastern culture. She traveled to India to learn about the Orient, but she never expected to meet her fiancé up close and personal. The trip coincided with her journey. She feels distant from Lonnie and proposes to break off the engagement, but withdraws the proposal because of the shock of the East. But in reality she is not in love with Lonnie, so while looking out over Chandrapur from the Malabar caves, she associates herself with the Indian man beside her who doesn't know whether he loves his wife or not, and asks that ambiguous question. She didn't mean to tease, but two ambiguous questions in a row created an awkward atmosphere, and Aziz stepped aside so he could cool off. Aidra herself, however, was flustered by her own associations and was out of control. After her wild ride down the hill, all that could be seen of her was bruises all over her face and body, and she was in a semi-conscious state. The audience did not hear her accuse Aziz, but she was surrounded by a group of British official ladies, and the reliability of the words that came out of their mouths was much in doubt. Ronnie becomes the dominant figure in the matter.
The plot of A Passage to India revolves around the relationships of six characters. In addition to the two mentioned above, there are two Englishmen. Lonnie is the archetypal British colonialist and Fielding represents the righteous Englishman who opposes colonial rule and advocates friendship with India. And the two Indians in the movie, Godbole and Aziz represent the Eastern philosophical thought and democracy among the Indians. Godbole, an old Brahmin scholar, believes that there is a cycle of life, that good and evil have their causes and effects, that everything is predestined, and that it is useless to resist. He had a feeling that the trip to Malabar is very bad, but do not show, just to be alone, and managed to drag the morning prayers to avoid attending; he knew that Aziz was wrongly accused, but did not want to fight, because he thought that the result is the same anyway. Perhaps it was this philosophy of tolerance that kept India under colonial rule for so long.
Aziz was a Western doctor, Western-influenced and democratically minded. He had no love for the British colonizers. He once said that a British man becomes a do-gooder after two years in India, while a British woman needs only six months. There is a scene in the movie that amply demonstrates this: one night, the British Major asks Aziz to go out on a clinic. It's a long way to go, so Aziz hires a carriage to get to the major's house, only to be told by the servant that the major is not at home. The major's wife and her girlfriend came out of the house, talking and laughing, and without even looking at Aziz, got into the carriage he had hired and left, leaving Aziz alone in the darkness, because since the master had gone out, the servant had put out the light at the front door. It is to be imagined that, after such a humiliation, Aziz naturally surprised Mrs. Moore, who had treated him as an equal, as if she were a god. And he was even more flattered by Fielding's invitation to his home-the first time he had ever entered a white man's home. Thus, when Fielding's tie-buckle suddenly breaks, he does not hesitate to unbuckle his own for Fielding to use (adding to Lonnie's racial prejudice, who, when he sees Aziz's collar turn out as a result, says contemptuously to Eldra, "See, there's the Indian. Well-dressed, but he doesn't know how to use a tie-buckle!") After a few encounters with Fielding, Aziz considers him his confidant, showing him unreservedly his treasured photographs of his late wife, caring about his marital problems, and even revealing to him that he likes women with large breasts. Aziz is too naive, white people give him a point of friendship, he returned ten points. Without considering his actual condition, he rashly offered to treat two female guests to a tour of the Malabar Caves. He was as excited as a child when the trip was made. Train is moving, he climbed out of the car, only with one hand to grab the door, the whole body as "big" shape shouted: "I am Douglas Van Punk!" Sitting on the back of an elephant with two English ladies, he was even more flamboyant, saying he felt like an emperor. His enthusiasm rises and then all at once falls to freezing point. After his arrest he calmed down and became disillusioned with all the English. Fielding wrote to him twice after his return and he did not reply. It was only when he saw that the daughter of Mrs. Moore, whom he only respected, had become Fielding's wife that his knot of affection was opened.
David Lean has been known to favor the exotic. A Passage to India was filmed in India, Nepal and Kashmir in the Himalayas. Like his past masterpieces, this movie is unparalleled in its scenic beauty. Whether it's distant mountains, near water, barren wilderness, lush green earth, rocky jutting peaks, temples under the moonlight, stormy nights, ice-covered villages, it's not filmed for the sake of curiosity, but is part of the story, almost a character, a symbol of the chaotic agnostic external world he depicts along with the inner world of his characters. Almost every one of his films has been a huge visual treat for the audience, so it's no wonder they've all been hits and misses.
A Passage to India is nearly three hours long, but it never feels like such a long movie. The whole movie is one take, not a single superfluous shot. This kind of power has to do with David Lean's background as an editor. In his early years as an editor, he was fired by a producer for cutting too much. But that didn't make him give up his harsh editing habits. What is preserved in his hands must be either stunningly beautiful or uniquely new. He once said, "I can cut a shot without mercy, even a good one, as long as it affects the flow of the movie." More than a decade of experience in editing work has led him to start editing in his head while directing. As a result, he runs out of film at a very low rate and produces films that are both tight and fluid. In David Lean's films, meaning is conveyed not primarily through dialogue, but through imagery. A Trip to India, which he edited himself, is naturally a masterpiece.