WORLD TOUR Day 47 - India
BEFORE: Teams must now fly to India and ride an elephant to receive their next clue. (Sorry, I was channeling "The Amazing Race" there for a second...) I've gone on to Asia, since I don't have access to the latest film in the "Madagascar" series. This is sort of the follow-up to "A Room With a View", which was also based on a novel written by E.M. Forster. Linking from "Born Free", Geoffrey Keen was also in a film called "Cromwell" with Alec Guinness (last seen in "The Ladykillers").
THE PLOT: Cultural mistrust and false accusations doom a friendship in British colonial India between an Indian doctor, an Englishwoman engaged to marry a city magistrate, and an English educator.
AFTER: Well, it was either watch this film or "Gandhi", and I'm still not ready for that one. This film was 2 hours and 45 minutes long, which was long enough. Geez, I have to go to work in the morning!
The unintended theme developing this week seems to be the influence European colonialism - we had the French controlling things in Morocco in "Casablanca", the European gorilla poaching trade in Rwanda, and the British game warden managing the animal population in Kenya. Tonight's setting, India, is the classic example of British Imperialism, and this film explores some of the differences between the Brits and the natives. I must have been out sick when this was covered in school, because it's all new to me.
I can't say if it's all right or wrong, but it sure seems like the Brits treated the Indians as second-class citizens. There are obvious resemblances here to the trial that's central to the plot of "To Kill a Mockingbird" - and here a British prosecutor makes some rather racist remarks about Hindu men preferring white women, but the reverse not being true.
As with other recently watched adaptations of novels, I've gone to the modern-day Cliff Notes, Wikipedia, to familiarize myself with the novel. According to that, the ending of the novel was intentionally ambiguous with regard to Aziz's guilt or innocence. So we're still left with the question about what exactly happened in the Marabar Caves, and what the deal is with Adela Quested. According to the IMDB, since E.M. Forster was homosexual, he was ambivalent towards women (not sure I follow the logic...) so therefore she can't be deluded, evil, malicious or stupid (again, not sure I follow the logic).
Alec Guinness appears here in dark-skin make-up (I thought that sort of thing was frowned upon) though he does lend some Hindu wisdom in a Kenobi-like fashion. Basically, if things are meant to be, they're meant to be, and nothing we can do will change the outcome. Seems more like an excuse to be lazy, if you ask me.
Also starring Judy Davis (last seen in "The Break-Up"), Victor Banerjee, Peggy Ashcroft, James Fox (last seen in "Sherlock Holmes").
DISTANCE TRAVELED TODAY: 2,965 miles / 4,772 km (Nairobi, Kenya to Bangalore, India)
DISTANCE TRAVELED SO FAR: 20,126 miles / 32,392 km
RATING: 4 out of 10 tea parties
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