 |  | Sensitive, intelligent portrayal that rings true |  |
I like to approach movies with a clean slate. I do not study my history books or movie reviews before I watch them. I depend on the movie itself to inform me, entertain me, and move me.
This movie stands out on all three fronts. Unlike many American movies that tell too much, this movie is brilliant in letting the story unfold in the gentlest, yet most emotionally charged manner. When one of the players says to Mr. Buckingham, "Sir, I have three little children. What do I tell them when I cannot send them money? Tell me what do to do, Mr. Buckingham." Those words speak of the pain of someone forced to leave a work s/he loves due to realities of daily living. One also sees the collapse of a portion of a culture due to an indifference that is inevitable yet tragic. And the final scene between Lizzie and Sanju, when Lizzie says, "I would give up anything for you. All you have to do is ask," and she is met by silence from Sanju... It speaks volumes of the experience of a young person realizing for the first time that s/he loves someone who cannot return the love in the way s/he needs it returned.
This is a very human story which also tells, not of a love/hate relationship between two cultures (British and Indian), but one of love/indifference. And sometimes that is the most powerful conflict of all.
January 17, 2006The exquisite mood captured by this masterpiece is unique in my experience of motion pictures. The disc container description, partly repeated in the extra features section, is banal in the extreme, as well as laughably inaccurate. "Colonial rule" in India was not English, but British. The many Irish, Welsh and Scots who lived and died in India would hate to be called English. However, the dedicated husband and wife thespians are eccentrically English, of course. Their daughter, Lizzie, has never been outside India, and knows less of England than Sanju, the man she thinks she loves. The action is not set during the last days of the Raj. Nabokov's "Lolita", which is pointedly displayed early in the film (perhaps because it is also about the seduction of one culture by another), was first published in 1955, and Indian Independence took place in 1947. Sanju drives a white Mercedes, which I wouldn't like to date, but which is very definitely post-1955. The film was made in 1965. The rise of Bollywood must have been taking place at about this time. Much of the delicate ambience of the film is totally lost if the audience is misled into believing that India was like this before Independence. Only the ghost of the Empire lingers on in this quiet story. It is not really about a "clash" of cultures, with the violent hostility which that word implies; rather, it gently acknowledges that the old order is changing, giving place to a new. Indian potentates no longer personally strangle unwitting intruders for entering their women's quarters. At least, I don't think they do. The lives of Lizzie's parents are irrevocably inter-woven with a vanished time: they will die in India. Because Lizzie has no place in the new India, she has to be sent away to a home she doesn't know. Her Indian playboy friend cannot commit himself to marrying her. Nevertheless, the truth is that in spite of the mockery directed against the theatre of Shakespeare by a more aggressively volatile element, very many actors on the imperial stage conceived a genuine love of India, and its high and ancient civilization, and this affection could be recognized and reciprocated, and still is, in part. The love affair continues, at least at some levels. This is an infinitely more nuanced work than David Lean's rather nasty and one-dimensional interpretation of E.M.Forster's shallow novel. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who wrote the screenplay of Shakespeare Wallah, displays a far finer spirit, greater precision and deeper humanity. Separation at any age is also a loss.
August 8, 2004This is a great film to watch on a rainy Sunday. The actors are all top rate and the story unfolds seamlessly. The cat fight between the English girl (played by Felicity Kendall) and the more sophisticated and conniving Bollywood actress was delicious. MEOW.
This underrated gem isnt as "processed" as later Merchant Ivory fare and this makes it //infinitely more superior// and heartwrenching than the glossier and more commercial "Howards End." Some parts are a bit slow, dialogue can be stilted at times and the ending was depressing, but this movie is UNDENIABLY TOP RATE.
November 11, 2003More reviews at Amazon.com ...
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