A Passage to India

“-I’ve scarcely spoken to an Indian since we landed.
-Lucky you!”

It seems most of the English people in A Passage to India have no problem carrying and displaying this disdainful, colonial attitude, holding themselves and their culture at a much higher esteem than anything in India.  Throughout the film we see polite and proper English hold their noses as Indians pass by, enjoy elegant tea parties with a band full of native Indians playing British tunes as they dine and play polo.  To an idle eye just flipping channels, the Indian setting might be completely lost at times due to the heavy English influence.

However, Miss Adela Quested (Judy Davis) and Mrs. Moore (Peggy Ashcroft) are itching to see the real India, something their English friends don’t understand or recommend.  Adela is young and adventurous and I believe Mrs. Moore doesn’t want her to be stuck in a life of quiet repression so early.  The fact that Adela is engaged to Mrs. Moore’s stick-in-the-mud son, Ronny (Nigel Havers), the British magistrate, gives both women the silent, but mutual, push to find one final chance at adventure.  India seems to be just the place that can be so full of new discoveries and when Mrs. Moore accidentally meets Dr. Aziz (Victor Banerjee) there seems to be potential for great intercultural friendships as well.

Aziz is a smart and kind man, who holds the English in very high regard.  After being invited, at Mrs. Moore’s request, to meet Adela with Professor Godbole (Alec Guinness), and English Professor Fielding (James Fox) from the university, Aziz offers to take the ladies to the caves.  It’s simply an enthusiastic gesture of kindness and hospitality, but Aziz realizes he’s not prepared to take English women out on a picnic.

To adequately provide for these women, as he feels he should on such a journey, Aziz gets all his friends to help in providing refreshments, furniture to set up outside the caves and even a painted elephant to take them to the caves.  It’s one extravagant gesture of kindness after another with Aziz to impress these friendly visitors.  But his reward is less than grateful after Adela accuses him of attempted rape.  How do you think a court in a British colony will treat an Indian man under this accusation?

Leading up to the picnic excursion, we watch Adela discover ruins of a temple, complete with erotic statues.  Surely, the young English maiden is shocked by the unbridled images, perhaps she can’t even comprehend them.  From them, we are to believe that she understands a sense of passion about them, something she realizes she will never find from her rigidly pent up fiancé.  This moment of discovery and the accusation of rape are not directly linked, but come about by the new ideas forming in Adela’s mind.

A Passage to India is the last of David Lean’s sprawling epics.  The images he shows us of India are more beautiful than the colonizing British can appreciate.  There’s a mysticism at times that can permeate through the film, and the echoes within those caves can haunt even the most grounded individual.  See this film to find out if Aziz is innocent or not.  Love it for its natural beauty.

“My dear, life rarely gives us what we want at the moment we consider appropriate. Adventures do occur, but not punctually.”

Doctor Zhivago

Based on Boris Pasternak’s novel, Doctor Zhivago is the story of a doctor/poet during the Russian Revolution.  In the present, we have Zhivago’s half brother, General Yefgraf (Alec Guinness), questioning a young girl, whom he thinks is Zhivago’s child.  With a collection of Zhivago’s poems in hand, he proceeds to tell her about Yuri’s life, beginning from his childhood when his mother died, through his efforts as a doctor in the war and his hardships in the revolution.

The film quickly becomes a love story set on top of the revolution.  While Yuri (Omar Sharif) is an idealistic student of medicine, he meets Lara (Julie Christie), a poor girl naively caught up with Victor Komarovsky (Rod Steiger).  Later, Lara is not so helpless, breaks into a party and shoots Victor in front of Yuri.  Later, in the war, Yuri and Lara find themselves working together in a makeshift hospital.  These are just unfortunate meetings of chance, but can mean so much to a poet.  But Lara is married to a revolutionary, Pasha (Tom Courtenay) and Yuri starts his own family.  As the revolution intensifies and his poems gain him an unwanted reputation, he and his family travel out to the country to live peacefully.  In the nearby town, there is Lara again and soon she and Yuri start a passionate affair that does not stand a chance against the revolution closing in around them.

David Lean is one of the film masters who makes all his movies look amazing.  Doctor Zhivago is full of beautiful shots using the Russian scenery and brutal snow to his advantage.  The costumes, sets and little details go a long way here.  There’s something poetic about shots of ice crystals on windows that melt away to usher in the daffodils of sprint.  The one image that completely floored me was the snowy palace in the middle of winter.  Between the beautiful Russian architecture and the amount of snow drifting all over the building, it’s an unforgettable image.  The things Lean can do with snow or sand just overwhelm me.

While the film passes for a good epic, I feel that it lacks heart or personality.  For example, in Lean’s masterpiece, Lawrence of Arabia, Lawrence is an amazing character.  He’s often strange but fantastic and the audience genuinely likes him.  We could gush on describing him for hours.  But here, Yuri Zhivago has a basic lack of characteristics.  I thought for a moment how I could describe him, my list read as 1. Poet and 2. Mustache.  He is such a passive protagonist, events happen around him, things happen to him.  His poetic personality is hard for viewers to identify with and connect to.  I acknowledge that he is a person that helps shape these events, but I don’t see those events shaping him.  In real life, it is not a bad thing to just go with the flow, but in a three hour film we need more from a protagonist.

One thing that really bugged me was the fact that Yuri was an influential poet, good enough for his work to be banned, yet we never hear a word of his work.  I realize that his poetry should not be at the center of the story, but it needs to be in there somewhere, perhaps it could shed some personality on Yuri.  At least we see him writing a couple times.

In the end, Doctor Zhivago is a good looking epic that becomes a so-so love story.  With Lean’s wonderful reputation, it’s best not to get too excited when you pick up Doctor Zhivago.  I had high hopes that just became disappointments.  Those snow scenes are beautiful, but can only heal so much.

“The personal life is dead in Russia.  History has killed it.”

Lawrence of Arabia

Before the film begins, the screen is black and music plays, just as David Lean intended.  I know it’s tempting to skip the Overture, but don’t do it.  Relax.  Close your eyes.  Unless you’ve already seen the film, what you imagine is nothing to the expansive natural imagery you’re about to witness.  The crisp blue sky will lay perfectly on the soft clean sand.  Huge red canyons and rocks as tall as skyscrapers look like they were just set there perfectly.  When a tiny camel shaped dot comes running across, you’ll realize the grand scale and openness of this land.  This is the only music that could explain this land, and let you take it all in and sigh at it’s beauty.  Cherish the moment.

The film is based off of T.E. Lawrence’s autobiography, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.  In WWI Lawrence (Peter O’Toole) is a British intelligence officer who seems bored with his work in Cairo.  When he is given leave to investigate the Arab revolt against the Turks, he unites the Arab tribes led by Auda Abu Tayi (Anthony Quinn) and Prince Feisal (Alec Guinness).  He becomes accepted and honored by the Arabs and leads them across the desert to attack the Turks.  The British army did not expect this from the young man, especially when he shows up wearing white Arab robes, but they cannot argue with his results.  As Lawrence continues to lead the Arabs in desert raids, including derailing Turkish trains, he becomes more and more conflicted between his British ties and Arab friends, who at times seem to worship him.

In a conversation, we see Lawrence remembered as both a great hero and “the most shameless exhibitionist since Barnum & Bailey.”  Peter O’Toole plays Lawrence is an unusual but charismatic man.  He enjoys letting matches burn down to his fingertips and believes being in the desert will be “fun.”  There is an odd sense of determination about him and regularly puts himself in mortal danger but becomes a hero in his survival.  By the second half of the film, it seems he’s just asking for it and gloats his acceptance and power over the Arabian troops.  This seems to go to his head,  he tries to blend in and pass himself off as an Arab, but to no avail.  As he becomes driven by new found blood lust, his friend Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif) holds his barbarous secret.  Through it all, we love Lawrence, we understand his human flaws and conflict between loyalties.  And is crystal blue eyes are the one thing that can match the desert’s beauty.

The desert is full of exciting obstacles that Lawrence must brave.  Learning to ride a camel is the least of his worries when he learns that men from one tribe do not permit men from another tribe to drink from their well.  Ali kills his first guide over a well dispute.  There are also natural threats, like sand storms, the beautifully eerie sand cyclone and quicksand that can swallow a man in moments without leaving a trace.  These seem to frighten Lawrence and fuel his curiosity as much as ours.

Over the years, Lawrence of Arabia has been hailed as one of the best films ever made.  It won seven of it’s ten Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and holds the fifth highest spot on AFI’s top 100 films list.  Stephen Spielberg once viewed the film with David Lean and claims to watch Lawrence of Arabia before directing all of his movies.  But be warned, Lawrence of Arabia is a nearly four hour epic.  It may not be the best film for fair-weather film fans who buy tickets mostly for romantic comedies.  However, for anyone who wants to claim even a mild interest in film, this should be at the top of your must-see list.  No excuses.

“What attracts you personally to the desert?
It’s clean.”

Great Expectations

In David Lean’s adaptation of the classic Dickens novel, young Pip (Tony Wager) is a naive orphan living with a blacksmith and his wife near the marshlands.  One day, while visiting the graves of his parents, an escaped convict asks Pip to bring him food, threatening him with a horrible death.  Gullible but good hearted Pip brings the man some food, but fears he will be in trouble for it.  When the convict is captured, he claims to have stolen the food from the blacksmith’s house himself, sparing Pip any consequences of his actions.

Later, Pip is requested by Miss Havisham (Martita Hunt) to become playmates with her adopted daughter, Estella (Jean Simmons).  The old woman wears her wedding dress and is surrounded by cobwebs and the decay of her wedding day that never came to be.  She has closed out the sun and stays in the room with the long table, set for her wedding.  Estella is a bratty girl who fiercely looks down upon Pip and thrives on building him up just to demoralize him.  The pretty girl’s constant pushing and pulling on Pip only makes him pine for her.  She seems heavily influenced by Miss Havisham, perhaps a tool for revenge against all men.

When Pip (now played by John Mills) is in his late teens, he learns that a mysterious benefactor has arranged for him to go to London to become an educated gentleman.  There he becomes roommates with Herbert Pockets (an amazingly young Alec Guinness in his first speaking role), and learns the fine arts of fencing, dancing, boxing and having lavish sophisticated parties.  Pip and Herbert carelessly rack up more expenses than they plan and Pip realizes his wealth is turning him into a snob.  When he finds out who his benefactor is, he decides to return the favor.

The greatest thing Lean brings to this classic story is an intense visual experience.  The marsh scenes in the beginning feel nearly surreal with so much fog and characters shown in so much shadow that they nearly become silhouettes at times.  In the scenes with Miss Havisham, the gloom she surrounds herself in feels so real, I could believe in a woman who stays in the dark with her decades old wedding cake.  There’s something haunting about the photography that has a heightened feel or reality, at times it feels like the movement is happening in fast-forward.  It’s hard to explain, but somehow this fluidity on screen gave me the idea that everything felt so real and yet dreamlike.  I believe it’s just David Lean working his movie magic.

Sometimes it feels like classic novel adaptations are just a dime a dozen.  Within this blog, I’ve seen more than one really cares to, and usually the film doesn’t do anything more special than give you the basic watered-down story in a quicker time frame.  Dickens is an author we all should read more, but if you do want to see a film depicting his work, this may be it.  There will always be inconsistencies and not every detail from the novel will make it on film.  But what Lean brings to the screen only heightens what Dickens wanted to put in our imagination.

“Come close. Look at me. You aren’t afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since before you were born?”

 

The Bridge on the River Kwai

In a Japanese POW camp, prisoners are overworked and the death rate is extremely high.  We first meet Shears (William Holden) as he’s digging a grave, by the time he’s finished he can’t even remember who he just buried.  He has seen so many men arrive and die in this camp his spirit is nearly broken and  he’s thinking about trying to escape.  There are no fences or barbed wire to hold him back, but the armed guards and jungle have proven too much for all who have tried.

One day a troop of British soldiers come marching and whistling into the camp, still keeping their head up and back straight under their leader Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness).  At first, Nicholson seems stupidly defiant against his Japanese captors, insisting that they do things by certain codes and that he lead his men on their project; to build a bridge over the Kwai River.  This lands Nicholson in “the oven,” a metal box that heats up in the sun, but once the Japanese realize how badly they need someone to lead the men efficiently, Nicholson is put in charge of building the bridge.

Nicholson turns what could be a laborious task and turns it into a moral exercise for his troops.  He believes that doing something constructive with their time will help the men cope with their capture and keep them good soldiers.  That all sounds perfectly fine, but soon Nicholson takes so much pride in the work he and his men put into the bridge, he believes it to be a testament to British foreign relations.  He seems to forget that they are at war with their captors, that the bridge they are building could be seen as treason to his country.

Meanwhile, Shears (who is assumed dead by the whole camp) has narrowly escaped the and is part of a plan to blow up the bridge.  This part of the story shows us jungles, cliff sides and beautiful waterfalls to bathe in.  These beautiful shots are just a preview for the amazing things director David Lean is capable of showing.  As the team journeys to take down the bridge, Nicholson is becoming more attached to his work.  Up to the very end, tension is pulled tighter and everything comes down to one moment.

Alec Guinness is so convincing in his portrayal of Colonel Nicholas.  He fiercely believes in his principals to near stubbornness and that sort of conviction is what rallies his troops behind him.  When he agrees to build the bridge, and build it well, his ideas behind making solid structure he and his men could be proud of is compelling.  He believes so much that what he was doing was right that I started to believe as well.  And that’s what makes an Oscar winning performance.

One of the things most people remember about The Bridge on the River Kwai is the whistling melody.  That played a big role in winning the award for best musical score.  Believe me, you’ll recognize it once you hear it and will probably find yourself whistling along within the first fifteen minutes.

I do believe that The Bridge on the River Kwai is a fantastic film that everyone should see.  It won a slew of awards including best picture and David Lean’s first win for best director.  In the end though, 1957 gave us three amazing films.  There is still one left that I’d like to consider at the top, by just a small margin.  More tomorrow.

“As I’ve told you before, in a job like yours, even when it’s finished, there’s always one more thing to do.”

In Which We Serve

“This is the story of a ship.”  It’s also about the men who served her and their wives who know they come second to her.  Real life survivor of the H.M.S Torrin, Noel Coward directs with David Lean in Lean’s first and Coward’s only film.

After the H.M.S Torrin, a British destroyer, is sunk her survivors cling to a life raft bracing themselves for aerial attacks and praying for rescue.  In a series of flashbacks their individual stories are told, both on and off the Torrin.  We see the men with their families, celebrating their leave and preparing to set sail again.  They cherish life and all it has to offer off the ship, but never grumble when on the Torrin.  They love her and are true to her as if she were a second wife.

One scene I found very fascinating is where the men are in battle.  In war films today, it seems that guns just go off effortlessly and the men stand and shout orders in utter chaos.  This scene shows the men in an assembly line, passing the huge pieces of ammunition from one man to the other, onto a sort of conveyer that takes it to the next man up until one man loads it into the gun.  It’s so controlled and efficient, if there weren’t planes overhead and the sounds of bombs dropping, it would be calm.  The scene really shows the discipline and focus of the men until, well you’ll see at the end of the scene.

Some might classify In Which We Serve as just another WWII film glorifying the brave men who fought and died.  Those are a dime a dozen.  Written with Coward’s first hand experience you can see the heart as he tells his story and that of his comrades.  There’s a much bigger focus on time with family rather than battle stations on deck, as that is what men clinging to a life raft would be thinking about.  As for director Lean, he seemed to become the brains when it came to film making, even though he was technically second in command.  Nonetheless, this is a wonderful to film start his amazing career with and he has much to thank Coward for.  Lean would later direct the timeless epic Lawrence of Arabia among other classics.

“God bless our ships… and all who sail in them.”