A Passage to India

E. M Forster's novel A Passage to India (1924) is astonishing.  Setting aside some political concerns, the book has no defects:  the writing is remarkable, the characters imagined with penetrating and compassionate analysis, and the story itself gripping and, almost, unbearably suspenseful -- the trial scene is among the greatest things of its kind.  Forste'sr mystical digressions are also surprising and effective:  his promotion of the kindly, ineffectual Miss Moore to the role of a celestial deity, a  kind of Kwannon of divine mercy is both fascinating and moving.  The book's end, a long coda featuring a Hindu festival in the foothills of the Himalayas dares to imagine a world in which the British are an inconsequential, even negligible presence in India and, now, seems extraordinarily prescient.  I came to the book late in my life, but better late than never -- reading the novel is a great pleasure.

David Lean adapted Forster's book in 1984 to pretty much universal acclaim.  The picture is long and features prestigious actors and Lean mounts the story with as much pageantry and exotic splendor as the text will support -- although he doesn't do justice in any way to the barbaric glory of the Hindu festival in the book's last scene, reducing that celebration to a couple shots of some bursting fireworks.  The mysticism with which Foster imbues some of his scenes isn't replicated by Lean -- this is probably for the best since mystical experiences generally yield wooly and illegible images that are unconvincing on all levels.  Lean manages the central enigma of the events at the Malabar Caves effectively and the great trial scene is thrillingly well done.   Nonetheless, my close reading of the novel defeats the movie for me -- it seems, more or less, a vapid illustration of events far more effectively conveyed in Forster's resonant and elaborately ornamented prose.  Furthermore, the movie has aged in a way not particularly becoming -- Alex Guinness who plays the eccentric Hindu professor, Godbole, is an embarrassment:  was there no actor on the Indian sub-continent who couldn't be cast in the part?   (And Guiness is actually very good -- but it's a bit jarring to see Obi Wan Kenobi playing the part of the Hindu philosopher.)  In the era of #MeToo, the plot's central thesis, that the heroine invents an attempted rape on the basis of sexual hysteria will be problematic for many viewers.  I watched the film with my son who has been thoroughly educated in denunciation of the so-called "rape culture" said to be prevalent in college campuses.  He was unable to perceive Miss  Quested's experience as a hallucination and was convinced that someone must have tried to rape her -- perhaps, he thought, the guide.  (To the literal-minded young, the scene in which Miss Quested stands bemused before ancient Hindu erotic sculptures and, then, is pursued on her bicycle by lascivious apes seems merely anecdotal and not symbolic as Lean intends.  And, if that symbolism eludes you, Lean's use of actors masked and painted as apes in the celebration that erupts into rioting during the trial will seem merely grotesque.)  Lean's adaptation, of course, doesn't illumine this issue very well.  By contrast, Forster's book makes it clear that Miss Quested has encountered some unacceptable aspect of herself in the echo chamber of the Malabar Caves and, then, been talked into believing that she was assaulted by bigoted members of the British community offended by her apparently close relationship with Dr. Aziz.  The peer pressure on Miss Quested which first forges her accusation and, then, causes her to persist in it is only slightly implied -- the novel, of course, is much more incisive as to the reasons that her vague sense of existential discomfort gets framed as an accusation with disastrous criminal implications. 

Forster's book is an indictment of the racism and hubris of the British Raj.  An elderly widow, Miss Moore and her soon-to-be daughter-in-law travel from England to India.  Miss Moore, an open-minded and kindly woman, meets Dr. Aziz, a Muslim physician.  They forge a friendship and Dr. Aziz is pathetically desperate to make a good impression on his new British friends.  Various members of the community warn the women that they should not fraternize with the local natives, including Dr. Aziz who has been educated in England.  Miss Quested sees her fiancé, Miss Moore's son, as an exemplar of the arrogance of British rule over India and she rejects him.  Dr. Aziz organizes a day-trip to the Malabar Caves, spending much money to make certain the two English women will enjoy the visit -- he even rents an elephant to transport them up the mountain to the small, dark chambers cut into a vast dome of granite.  In one of the caves, Miss Quested has a kind of hallucination and runs down the mountain, plunging through cactus and cutting herself badly.  Later, she accuses Dr.  Aziz of attempting to rape her.  A trial is convened during the Hindu celebration and the proceedings become inflected with radical anti-British sentiment.  Miss Moore, sure that Aziz is innocent flees the country and dies en route to England.  (Her absence as a witness at the trial is of immense importance and, for the Hindus, in attendance she comes to assume an almost divine significance).  Miss Quested realizes at the trial that she doesn't know what exactly befell her in the cave but that Aziz is innocent.  Her testimony to that effect triggers an acquittal, a riot, an impressive monsoon thunderstorm, and, at last, her ostracism from the British community.  A sympathetic English teacher, Mr. Fielding saves her from the mob and she departs with him for England.  Dr. Aziz is soured by the experience and wants nothing to do with the English -- he's cured of his former fawning desire to make friends with, or impress, the White administrators.  He retreats to a Principality in the Himalayan mountains.  A few years later, Fielding comes to visit him and Aziz forgives him and Miss Quested as well for the horrors of the trial. 

The acting in the film is uniformly excellent.  Victor Bannerjee, playing Dr. Aziz, is superb -- he cringes in the presence of the Brits, fawns on them, and, then, later, after the trial, dons a resplendent White caftan (discarding his suits and ties) and proudly rebukes his former friends.  Judy Davis, playing Miss Quested, is suitably confused and plain -- one of the themes in the book is that she is much too unattractive for the extremely handsome Dr. Aziz and he has no sexual interest in her at all.  Lean's cinematography is the opposite of atmospheric -- it's extremely clear, over-lit to my tastes, and his editing is somewhat primitive:  we see someone looking with awe or wonder or surprise or anger -- then, there is a cut to what the person is seeing.  The film has an aspect of a made-for-TV movie of the time, but with much, much higher production values.  Despite these criticisms, one must concede the picture is exceptionally lucid and always makes perfectly good spatial and narrative sense.  Lean has a tendency to stage everything on the largest possible scale, except that when he should adopt an epic approach -- for instance, in the festival scenes in the book's coda -- he shirks that duty and, in fact, films that part of the story abstemiously.  As an example, Miss Quested is driven to the trial through a rioting mob -- hundreds of extras throng around her carriage.  In one shot, Lean shows the carriage passing a military installation where about a thousand resplendently dressed soldiers are on parade.  It's only a single image, maybe eight or ten seconds long, and it must have cost a fortune to produce -- and for what purpose?  Throughout the movie, Lean has the annoying tendency to cut away to spectacle that is completely extraneous to the rather narrow confines of the story which is, for all intents and purposes, a courtroom drama.  When Mr. Fielding and his wife, Stella, pass through a tunnel into the vale of Kashmir, they stand awe-struck looking at the Himalayas -- Lean fills the screen with gigantic white mountains, a vantage that no one could actually have on these peaks without climbing half-way up them.  It doesn't make any sense but its a gratuitous spectacle of the kind that the director favors.