A Passage to India [1984]
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In the film which is an almost faithful adaptation of E. M. Forster's novel A PASSAGE TO INDIA (1924), Adela Quested (Judy Davis) and Mrs. Moore (Peggy Ashcroft) travel to India to visit the latter's son Ronny (Nigel Havers), who is also Miss Quested's fiancé. Ronny works there as a civil magistrate who is surrounded by other English employees, and these prefer to stay secluded in a milieu which they created to look like home. However, this is not what the two women had in mind; they visited the country with the expectation of seeing the real India. They manage to do so, but this experience ends as a rather tragic one for both. They get the chance to meet Dr. Aziz who seems to have a revolutionary spirit that is not satisfied with how the English treat his fellow countrymen. When he talks to these two ladies, he notices that they are different from the rest, or so he thinks, and he invites them to go with him and discover certain mysterious caves in India. Here things take a different turn. They start by visiting one of the caves, and there Mrs. Moore feels dizzy because of simply hearing the eco of Dr. Aziz's voice, and so she tells the two to visit the other places without her for she needs to rest. They leave her and go to another cave, and while Aziz smokes a cigarette, Adela enters a cave and after sometimes comes out of it with disheveled hair and bruised body. She meets a friend and goes with her to the city, and there she accuses Aziz that he raped her and he gets arrested for it.
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Many people believe after reading the novel or watching the film that Dr. Aziz is actually innocent and that Miss Adela Quested imagined all this, but the truth remains that what happens in the cave remains to be a mystery. In addition to the state of shock and terror that Miss Quested appears in after leaving the cave, she also has bruises all over her body, which leaves us in doubt as to what actually happened there. Now, apart from the main theme that obviously deals with colonialism, there is a disturbing sense of sexual tension that surprised me a little. This started even before the trip to the caves, when Miss Quested was discovering India alone on her bicycle, she found a temple with statues that represent sexual scenes on it. Adela was stunned by this and kept standing there and admiring the details until the monkeys that live in that place attacked her and she had to run away. After the cave scene and Adela's accusations of Dr. Aziz, the latter says to Fielding that this woman should find herself a husband, which seemed to me as extremely offensive. Of course, some people won't blame him for what he says for he appears to be wronged by the somewhat hysterical young woman, but the fact remains, I repeat, that we never actually know what happened. This idea, in fact, was so powerful that it frustrated me when I was watching the film, but when I read some other reviews about it I didn't find that the others gave it so much importance.
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So, did I like the movie or not? For me, any artwork that inspires strong feelings within you or, even better, makes you think is definitely a good one. Some people might not agree with this, but I'm one of those who are attracted to complexity more than anything else. This film gave me the thing I look for. In fact, I watched the movie simply because I heard so much about the novel but didn't have the chance to read it. I expected to watch an anti-colonial work with nothing else, but the sub-theme that stresses sexuality was a superb addition. Let me pose this exaggerated question here: what if our unfulfilled sexual needs harm us physically? What if they leave bruises all over our bodies? Of course, also remains the other possibility that Aziz actually raped Miss Quested.
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The only novels I read by E. M. Forster are HOWARDS END (1910) A ROOM WITH A VIEW (1908) and WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD (1905), and in these works as well as the others by this author, sexuality is one of the key themes. Apart from the themes, the main two female actresses' performance in the film is very remarkable especially that the events concentrate on their suffering in particular.
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