FILM OF THE WEEK
Viceroy’s House
Cert: 12A; Now showing
Director Gurinder Chadha dedicates Viceroy’s House to her grandmother whose baby daughter starved to death on the side of the road as a result of the events it describes. Clearly then it is not the classic posh folk, poor folk, nice clothes, politically light standard of British period drama. It is the story of the transfer of power in India, and a timely, as so much seems to be, reminder of the cost of hatred.
In 1947 Lord Louis Mountbatten (Hugh Bonneville) was dispatched with his wife Lady Edwina (Gillian Anderson) and their 18-year-old daughter Pamela (Lily Travers) to oversee the transfer of power from Britain to Indian self-rule. He had a tight deadline and it was a tough task in a country as populous as India, especially in the divided religious atmosphere of the time.
Mountbatten therefore had not only to oversee the transfer of power, but to negotiate the potential division of the country.
Chief civil servant General Ismay (Michael Gambon) regarded Mountbatten’s bonhomie as a great virtue to soften relations between Muslim political leader Jinnah (Denzil Smith) who wanted an independent Pakistan and almost all other Indian leaders, including Gandhi (Neeraj Kabi), who wanted unity, but hidden forces made negotiation more difficult than Mountbatten knew.
Meanwhile there is a somewhat sub-plot box-ticking R&J love between Aalia (Huma Qureshi) and Jeet (Manesh Dayal). Chadha’s most ambitious project tells the story well but lacks tension. I’m not a Bonneville fan and thought Anderson more impressive (there is no mention of Edwina’s alleged affair with Nehru (Tanveer Ghani). It’s informative and enjoyable.