A Passage to India

A Passage to India

It's 60 years since the end of the Raj and the Indian Independence. David Lean's classic movie is a fascinating interpretation of E.M. Forster's novel, telling part of the complex and on-going story between Britain and the Sub-Continent.

During the 1920s, young Englishwoman Adela Quested travels to India to visit her fiancé; she is accompanied by his mother, Mrs. Moore. The two women are curious to see the “real” India but their desire is frustrated by the stiff British colonial society. They finally meet young Dr. Aziz, an Indian who strives to integrate into the British way of life.

He takes the two to visit the renowned Malabar Caves. While Mrs. Moore drops back, Adela and Aziz enter the caves; soon after Adela- probably hallucinated or self-suggested- runs back accusing Aziz of attempting to rape her.

Immediately the British society turns on the young doctor and his dreams of integration are shattered.

In the end, Adela withdraws her charge: the experience of the caves proved so shocking that she is not even sure of what happened. Now it is her turn to be unanimously condemned.

A tale of tolerance and repressed sexuality, David Lean’s (Lawrence Of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago) last film was made in 1984, seven years before the Croydon director passed away.
Taken from  E. M. Forster’s novel, an unusual choice for a director who was famous for his trademark epic stories and larger-than-life heroes.

Of course the film cannot account all the psychological details that Forster crams his novel with; so the director infuses his work with a meditative pace and solemn cinematography to capture the sublime beauty of India.
Lean leaves his taste for epic behind and builds up a drama of embers burning under the ashes.  

Both Adela and Mrs. Moore want to see the real India and meet real Indians.

 But their point of view, albeit admirable, is inevitably colonialist. Aziz is dressed like a Westerner, speaks perfect English and wants to prove that Indians and British can integrate.
All three want to know what appears to be the “other” in their eyes.
 But they are forced to face a social hierarchy that holds on to their privileges; Britain has economic and social superiority, India remains a colony.

Aziz’s dream of integration is doomed from the start; Adela is scared and confused and doesn’t want to admit to the instinct that Indian wilderness arose in her whilst Mrs. Moore -  probably the only one who can see the truth  and calls men “random creatures in a godless world’-  is yet so sorrowfully disillusioned by men and has such a fear of primeval nature that it takes her to the grave.

The repressed longing between the young Englishwoman and the sensual Dr. Aziz makes things even more complicated: what is that Adela really wants? Does she want to get married to her insipid fiancé or does she crave for stronger emotions?

Is the attempted rape only the projection of a desire that is bound to be left unspoken? Certainly she is not strong enough to listen to her desire and take responsibility for it; that is why she would rather blame Aziz.
But then again, the audience will never know what actually happened in the cave, and could even believe that the doctor, under the integrated, almost corporate mask, is a lusty and fierce wild man.

The instable balance of the sexes and of the two civilizations is never solved and a sense of uneasiness lingers on - and this is what makes A Passage To India a marvellous piece of cinema and of psychology.


 

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