'Before the Rains' - A Role-Reversed Sequel to E. M. Forster's 'Passage to India'?

The storyline of ‘Before the Rains’ did not enthrall, yet it isn’t a movie I could forget easily, and for two reasons: its surreptitiously sensuous setting and its obvious parallels with E. M. Forster’s Passage to India.

The movie is set during the British colonial period in India, sometime in the 1930s, and it is perhaps a low budget film which accounts for its cast and its low key marketing (if any at all). It is the rich and vibrant colors of Kerala, the setting of the movie, that hold the audience in complete awe. This rapture soon melts into a willing submission of the audience, almost a seduction, to the luscious landscape of South Western India. The photography in the film has opened up a new tourist haven - a tropical coastal paradise. I wouldn’t be surprised if this movie does to Kerala what Brokeback Mountain did to Wyoming.

Apparently, ‘Before the Rains’ is adapted from the story “Red Roofs” presented by Israeli director Dany Verete in his movie Yellow Asphalt; Red Roofs is about an illicit relationship between an Israeli Jewish farmer and his Bedouin maid. However, it was not this Israeli connection that I was constantly reminded of during the movie; it was E.M.Forster’s characters, Mrs. Moore and Mr. Fielding, from Passage to India that kept flashing in my mind. Director Sivan’s chief protagonist, TK (Rahul Bose), is the Indian counterpart of Forster’s Fielding in Passage to India. Both characters are intelligent and sensitive human beings, who though wishing to be loyal to their own, are bipartisan in thought and ultimately in their actions as well which ultimately leads to major changeovers in the plot. In Forster’s novel, it is the native Indian, Dr. Aziz, who is accused of a physical assault on a memsahib, whereas in Before the Rains it is Planter Moore who is under suspicion for having an affair with his married Indian housekeeper. The parallel does not end there; there is a Mrs. Moore in the movie, who, coincidentally, has the very name of her Forsterian counterpart. She, like the other Mrs. Moore from Passage to India, is aware of the real nature of the relationship between her husband and the maid, and yet decides to keep quiet about it. Mrs Moore in Passage to India cannot live with the guilt of having kept silent on the Malabar incident and dies on her way to England; the Mrs. Moore of this film knowing the truth, cannot voice it, but decides to go back to England after ending her marriage.

As I said at the beginning, I haven’t been able to forget the movie. I’m still trying to figure out whether the obvious parallels between Before the Rains and E.M. Forster’s Passage to India were a chance happening, or did Santosh Sivan plan this movie as a role-reversed sequel to E. M. Forster’s Passage to India to explore the power and volatility of forbidden/ illicit relationships within a charged socio-political setting.

I would watch this one, if only for its seductive setting – Kerala.

'Traitor' the Movie and 'Blind Faith' the Novel - Don't Make the Mark.

The two things I were better off not doing this past week were watching the movie 'Traitor' and reading Ghose's novel 'Blind Faith'!

The former, a movie starring Don Cheadle, had movie goers agog prior to its release. Alas, it had the brilliant Don Cheadle beat about the hackneyed theme of home grown terrorism! How long will it take Hollywood to realize that the audience has moved on...

'Sagarika Ghose's 'Blind Faith' can't be termed a disappointment since I had no grand expectations of it other than it be a decent story told in an engaging way, or then, an engaging story related in a decent way. Well, it proved to be neither of the two! The one redeeming feature of the novel was the character of Indi which lent an 'oomph' to the novel, but not enough to float it. Ms. Ghose has remarkable credentials, and that makes me believe this is not the last we'll see of her. However, "Blind Faith" will not work!