Ahhh so that’s why it looks so good...the Director, Santosh Sivan made his name as a Cinematographer on films like Bride and Prejudice, one of the umpteenth outings of Jane Austen recently starring the I almost can’t look at her she’s so beautiful Aishwara Rai. And it’s also a “Merchant Ivory” production. Wasn’t the last time they did India in A Passage to India, David Lean’s last but not greatest film?

Another film I really wanted to like, okay I probably want to like every film I see since I’m such a cinephile. But seriously, set in Indian backcountry, lush visuals, beautiful people and a really compelling story about a young Indian man from a small village who has learned English to be modern and advance himself and who now works for an English planter. It’s meant to be about his coming to consciousness as he observes the world change around him even more quickly and complicatedly than he ever imagined. The setting is 1937, Indian people are mobilizing for independence but it’s still a ways off. T.K. works for a planter who is building a road, Henry Moores (Linus Roache). As is typical he believes this man to be sort of a friend and perhaps a superior and so politely looks the other way as Henry sleeps with Sajani (Nadita Das), a beautiful married woman from his village who happens to be his best friend’s sister. I am giving nothing away to say that something awful happens which compromises T.K. and which ulti-mately accounts for his “waking up” as it and literally following the “right” path to modern India.

This is an ambitious, literary project and it depends on our identifying with our main character T.K. He is our moral center, he is us, watching observing and asking our-selves what difficult choices we would make. And of course he, like us, are passive ob-servers and beneficiaries of all manner of injustice, and are therefore implicated and compromised. How to successfully communicate this internal conflict is the reason why so much great literature has not transitioned into the finest films. Think of how difficult it is to turn Henry James into great film...and I loved Portrait of A Lady but not without criticisms. So no surprise then that Merchant Ivory would take this on: it’s their marker -- great literature are us.


Again, I wanted to love this, wanted to be moved and saddened and outraged but I felt my emotions buried much like those of the main character T.K. He was weak...and he is clearly meant to be meek. But meekness of the individual and a weak character don’t have to be one in the same and in fact must not be in a film that is structured in such a way. And this is no fault of the actor (Rahul Bose) who was excellent with his large, ex-pressive eyes. Rather I think more he was not given enough to do, enough promi-nence within the story and even within shots. And the pat ending, with him joining the independence movement is a bit too tidily obvious.
I say Merchant Ivory don’t give up on literature and literary adaptations even if you sometimes miss the mark. Never forget Howard’s End, A Room With a View and Re-mains of the Day.

Opens in New York and Los Angeles May 9, 2008.

Directed by Santosh Sivan, written by Cathy Rabin, produced by Doug Mankoff, Andrew Spaulding, Paul Hardart, Tom Hardart and Mark Burton. Released by MIP/Roadside Attractions. Running time: 98 minutes.

With: Linus Roache (Moores), Rahul Bose (T.K.), Nandita Das (Sajani), Jennifer Ehle (Laura), John Standing (Humphries), Leopold Benedict (Peter), Indrajith Sukumaran (Manas) and Lal Paul (Rajat).