PASSAGE TO INDIA (1984)

Forty years after coming out, David Lean’s final film has, if anything, ripened; most of the reservations found on its release now hardly noticeable.*   Unprecedented three-in-a-row epic successes (BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI/’57, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA/’62, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO/’65) had left Lean unprepared for really bad notices on RYAN’S DAUGHTER/’70.  And though profitable, Lean basically licked his wounds for 14 years before PASSAGE brought him out of professional exile.  Now 75, the film has an I’ll-show-you energy & pace that’s rather thrilling.  It also looks like it cost three times its 16 mill. budget.  Thru sheer craft and a master’s confidence, it's not merely deeply satisfying but somehow, on a technical level,  emotionally moving.  And what a daring choice for a literalist like Lean, E.M.Forster’s critical look at the ruling Brits in India, with Lean's signature large-scale East/West clashes set beside personal stories defined by half tones, unknowable truths & emotional deflection following a nearly affianced young woman (an unsettling Judy Davis) when she visits her intended (Nigel Havers) on a trip with his aging mother (Peggy Asncroft, nonpareil) to his posting.  Hoping for real contact with a different culture , the two visitors feel stuck in the English colonial lifestyle, but break out thru a chance encounter the mother has with local doctor Victor Banerjee (Satyajit Ray's frequent lead).  Their nighttime meeting in an elsewise deserted mosque mysteriously throbbing with emotion.  But the path of good intentions . . . you know, East is East and all that, lead to an outing gone wrong at some foreboding caves, a criminal case, a confession to . . . well, to what, exactly?  Not really Lean territory at all.  Yet what an involving piece he makes of it.  So consistently interesting, thoughtful and well paced, it’s one of those 3-hr films that feels untethered to its actual running time.  Lean died before starting on Joseph Conrad’s NOSTROMO (still unproduced), but could he have chosen a better farewell?

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Three can still rankle: Maurice Jarre’s catchy score which naturally was Oscar’d; Lean reversing the novel’s last sentiments; and (the elephant in the room) Alec Guinness in ethnic drag as Professor Godbole.  And while he’s both charming & quite funny as the eccentric teacher/philosopher, the practice of Whites playing people of Color, at least in serious films, had already passed.  This casting entirely at Lean’s insistence, probably as insurance since Guinness, in spite of their long, bickering relationship, had been in all the late epics except the poorly received RYAN’S DAUGHTER/’70.

CONTEST:  Of late Lean epics, the only one shot flat (1.85: 1) instead of in a WideScreen format.  Explain why to win a MAKSQUIBS WriteUp of your choice.