A Passage to India

How Lean depicts the cultural, social and climatic differences of India and Britain in the first half is amazing. He gets to the noisy, crowded train stations and markets, the exoticness is astonishing as he downplays the affected stoic British superiority, and he gets drenched in sweat under the burning sun just as he gets drenched during a monsoon downpour. In doing so, he depicts the characters of various social and religious statuses, lets a slowly growing revolt swell in the background and contrasts understanding and sincere interest against “unconscious xenophobia". And that is completely fine as long as those points of friction are shown only incidentally (à la a shot of a train traveling through a breathtaking landscape, which slowly descends under the arches of the viaduct, where dozens of Indians from “inferior castes" with no roof over their heads are crammed together and not highlighted. However, as soon as it turns into a purely intimate declamation without pointing fingers in the middle of the movie, all that's left is “only" an affected theatrical play with excellent performances. (09/05/2020)

I didn't expect another big film from David Lean to captivate me, but it's surprising in that it's only a big film in certain parts; otherwise, it's a beautiful demonstration of how the discord between nations can be portrayed through two people who didn't even want to be part of the discord, but circumstances led them there anyway. David Lean brilliantly shows how dangerous man can be to man. (26/12/2015)