Movie: A PASSAGE TO INDIA
1984, color, directed by David Lean
Starring:
Judy Davis as Adela Quested
Peggy Ashcroft as Mrs. Moore
Victor Banerjee as Dr. Aziz


Stayed up last night to watch A Passage To India, one of my favorite movies, on TCM.
The setting: Backdrop is 1920's colonial India, where English ex-pats rule and stick together, but unrest is brewing among native Indians to shake off the British yoke.
Miss Quested sails to India with Mrs. Moore to marry Mrs. Moore's son. Miss Quested is naive about sex. After arriving in India, one day she rides her bicycle to some ancient ruins, and is astonished to see Kama Sutra type figures carved into the ruins where banyan tree roots grow over the stones. Soon a troop of resident monkeys arrive and screech at her and she hastily leaves.

The British have no use for the native Indians except as servants and underlings, but there is a British schoolteacher, Mr. Fielding, who treats the natives as equals. He finds that Mrs. Moore is an open minded person too. One day Mrs. Moore comes to see Fielding and finds Brahmin professor Godbole waiting to see Fielding. Godbole has taken off his shoes and sits on the side of a pool and immersed his feet. Mrs. Moore joins him and does the same. He realizes she has an old soul and respects her for her lack of prejudice.

Dr. Aziz, an Indian doctor eager to please the British, hears that Miss Quested and Mrs. Moore want to see the "real" India. He proposes a trip to see the ancient Marabar Caves and gets help to make the trip memorable for the ladies. They take the train to the nearest place to the caves, and Aziz has an elephant for the ladies to ride, and an extensive entourage to bring all the comforts of home along. First they visit a cave fairly easy to get to, that is famous for its eerie echoes. Mrs. Moore gets claustrophobia and leaves, over heated and tired.

The caves were carved out of the granite by ascetics thousands of years ago, and Aziz wants to show Miss Quested the ones at the top. She, Aziz and a guide head uo the slope. At the top, Aziz goes around the corner for a cigarette break, and returns to find Miss Quested nowhere in sight. All the caves have weird echoes, and Miss Quested has gone into one, and in the dark, she sees and hears Aziz looking for her. (What was she anticipating? Some sexual advance from Aziz?)
Suddenly she rushes from the cave and runs pell mell down the slope getting scratched with briars and is picked up by another Englishwoman who has arrived, and claims Aziz attemped rape.

Aziz was arrested. Mrs. Moore's son, not wanting her to testify, gets her on a train out of the country in the middle of the night. Strangly, as the train leaves, Professor Godbole is standing in the hadows with his hands clasped over his head as in a gesture of prayer and farewell. She leans out a window and watches him out of sight.
Mrs. Moore dies on the ship home and is buried at sea.

At the trial, The English are dumbfounded when under questioning, Miss Quested recants and says Aziz did nothing to her. She also says she realized she was not in love with the man she was supposed to marry.
Aziz is carried out of the courtroom by jubilant Indians. He is bitter and moves as far away from the British occupation as possible. Professor Godbole tells him "We are all part of a pattern of destiny we cannot perceive." He believes whatever happens is meant to happen.

In the end, Fielding marries Mrs. Moore's daughter Stella, and they go to see Aziz one last time. Aziz writes Miss Quested in England and thanks her, for no matter what happened, her actions have made his life complete as it is now. The movie ends with Quested holding the letter, looking out of a rainy window.

susil