Handsomely filmed, well acted and a good if
conventional example of Anglo-Indian heritage drama. (Review: Patrick Compton -
7)
This month (August) signals the 70th
anniversary of Indian independence and, traumatically, of the country’s
partition which led to the deaths of more than a million people amidst massive
population upheavals.
To mark the occasion, writer-director
Gurinder Chadha has devised a popular historical movie that sketches the drama
that beset the nation in 1947. If the movie is more Downton Abbey than an austere account of the complex series of
events – and their causes – that attended the event, it will certainly serve as
an accessible starting-off point for those interested in pursuing further
research.
This handsomely mounted period drama is
largely set in the English viceroy’s lavish Delhi palace – now the home of the
Indian president – where Lord Louis Mountbatten and his wife Edwina lived while
negotiating the transference of power from imperial Britain to India.
The Downton
Abbey atmosphere which largely obtains is not just a function of the
“upstairs-downstairs” element which features scenes between Mountbatten and the
likes of Indian leaders like Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah at one end of the
spectrum and the lives of the palace servants at the other. The role of
Mountbatten is amiably played by Hugh Bonneville, Lord Grantham in the series,
who virtually replays his TV character. His wife, sharply interpreted by
Gillian Anderson with a cut-glass accent, is, however, a very different beast
from Lady Grantham. Edwina is a passionate idealist not averse to sacking her
racist underlings who resent or drag their heels on independence.
While all the politicking is going on, our
emotional attention is drawn to the central relationship between two of the
Indian employees at the palace, Jeet (Manish Dayal) and Aalia (Huma Qureshi).
This handsome couple are divided by religion and their problems rather
simplistically reflect the troubles that beset the nation as street battles
begin to erupt between Hindus and Muslims and those contesting the fateful
decision to crudely cleave the country into three bits (initially India and
west and east Pakistan).
There has been considerable controversy
over the movie’s historical analysis of partition – with Churchill accounted
the ultimate villain of the piece – but it’s hard to dispute the film’s wider suggestion
that Britain’s divide-and-rule policies while it controlled India helped to
encourage the religious tensions that led to the deaths of so many.
Viceroy’s
House may not satisfy experts on the subject of
Indian independence: its dialogue has too much of the history primer in it and
the characters are painted with the broadest of brush strokes, but it is
handsomely filmed, well acted and a good if conventional example of
Anglo-Indian heritage drama. – Patrick Compton
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