ALL THE RAJ
A dash of Downton, a sprinkle of Gandhi. Hugh Bonneville as Mountbatten will be...
Finally, the last envelopes – both the right ones and the wrong ones – have been opened, the gongs handed out and the awards season draws to a close. Its ending marks the beginning of the spring season of commercial cinema, a change of tack that we will no doubt have ample opportunity to regret over the coming months but also, from time to time, to celebrate.
Which is certainly what we must do today because Viceroy’s House is very good indeed. Set mainly in the pre-independence, pre-partition India of 1947, it’s often stunning to look at, is very nicely acted and, perhaps most impressively of all, manages to make a difficult, challenging subject both moving and relatively easy to understand.
Maybe in the last respect, Gurinder Chadha, who directs and co-writes, has also been helped by the passing of time. After all, we now live in an era when more societies than ever – including our own – are divided, sometim violently, by religion. So today we have little problem in recognising the all-too-familiar in this bloody last chapter of British imperial history, a chapter that pitched Hindu against Muslim and Muslim against Hindu as two new nations – an independent India and Pakistan – emerged from the carnage and chaos. Put like that, it doesn’t sound like your ideal night out, does it? Which presumably is why Downton Abbey star Hugh Bonneville has been brought in to play the man responsible for negotiating the transfer of power, the last viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten. Nobody oozes privilege, pulls on a silk dressing gown or orders breakfast – ‘two poached eggs, tomatoes, sausage, tea’ – quite like Lord Grantham… sorry, I mean, Bonneville. And here he provides the amiable, intelligent, well-intentioned heart of the film, aided and considerably abetted by his co-star Gillian Anderson, who ensures that Mountbatten’s wife Edwina is a powerful character in her own right: often, indeed, the power behind the throne. She’s constantly urging her husband to take more time – ‘that’s why you’re such a bad chess player’ – and not to rush into decisions that will affect 400million people. But with India already aflame by the time he arrives, time is the one thing Mountbatten doesn’t have. Born in Kenya but raised in Britain, Chadha is best known for lightweight but classy comedies such as Bend It Like Beckham and Angus, Thongs And Perfect Snogging. But she makes the step to the larger, historical scale with hugely impressive ease, helped by the fact that, for her, partition is both real
and personal. Her grandmother survived it – but only just – losing an infant in the bloody contraflow of refugees that saw Muslims heading towards Pakistan and Hindus and Sikhs towards India.
Chadha’s depiction of life within the enormous Viceroy’s House in Delhi is extraordinary, with armies of servants – both for indoors and out – to ensure everything was… well, as the British wanted. Spotless, orderly, on time. So when Edwina issues the instructions, shortly after her arrival – that half the dinner guests should henceforth be Indian – that more Indian dishes should be served, and that she wants to meet more Indian women, feathers are definitely ruffled.
This is not a subtle film, with the main story – about how India and Pakistan were divided along religious lines – being rather obviously ‘balanced’ by a below-stairs love story that sees a young Hindu valet (Manish Dayal) falling in love with Aalia (Huma Qureshi), a beautiful Muslim secretary. Others have used a similar plot structure before, with Deepa Mehta’s partition-era drama, Earth, coming particularly to mind. Here, the clumsy device of crucial diplomatic conversations being overheard by Viceroy House staff is somewhat overused, while all the chat between so-called ‘masters’ and their servants is pure Downton. Both, however, are likely to go down well with a large section of the potential audience. With cinematography that makes you want to book the first flight to Delhi, and music from the great AR Rahman of Slumdog fame, there is so much to enjoy. Look out for one of the last performances from the unmistakable Om Puri, who died in January, and for fine supporting performances from Denzil Smith, Tanveer Ghani and Neeraj Kabi as that trio of pioneering politicians Muhammad Jinnah (the father of Pakistan), Jawaharlal Nehru (the first prime minister of an independent India) and Mahatma Gandhi, the latter with notably far fewer teeth than Ben Kingsley ever essayed.
Of course, Richard Attenborough’s multiple Oscar-winning masterpiece comes repeatedly to mind and, while Viceroy’s
House doesn’t have the epic sweep of Gandhi, it’s shorter, less demanding and more entertaining. I’m pretty sure Dickie would have loved it – I did.