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Of Tea and Spices, Water and Fire
By bukkhead | June 23, 2008
FILM REVIEW: ‘BEFORE THE RAINS’
Written by Cathy Rabin
Directed by Santosh Sivan
Rated PG-13
98 mins.
In the jungles of southern India, an English spacer trader building a road falls in love with one of his household servants. She is married to an austere man from the nearby village, doubling the taboo inherent in the affair. Witness to this and accomplice in the consequences is an Indian guide and foreman who straddles India’s past and future, a dutiful son educated in British schools. Merchant and Ivory’s latest films is a symbol of the Great Britain’s own affair with India in the early 20th century.
Director Santosh Sivan expertly juxtaposes the lush, humid jungle of southern India and her warmly brown denizens with the crisp, cool, whiteness of her English visitors. Breathtaking backdrops and fecund greenery surround an Edwardian plantation house, itself filled with the accoutrements and comforts of a genteel lifestyle. This is the meeting of tea and spice—and that both come from India, originally, explains why Britain was seduced by this continent.
Henry Moores is indeed a man who has been seduced, not only by Sajani, his servant, but by India as well, her potential, the opportunities that lie in wait for any many bold and brave enough to hack his way through her jungles. But if this is passion, it must be passion civilized: he will build a road, and he will profit. His uncontrollable desires for Indian’s beauty will be tempered by his mercantilism and business obligations.
For her part, Sajani, too, has been seduced, by a man who all but worships her beauty, her exotic spiciness and allure. He is white, and British, and acknowledges and indulges in her beauty and grace, as opposed to her husband, who only sees fit to physically chastise and treat her as but mere property. Sajani wants to immerse herself in the spirituality of her own roots, while at the same time is pulled by this Englishman’s love.
Henry and Sajani or two tragic figures, but the greatest struggles is witnessed in T.K., Moore’s guide and foreman. Heres’ a man who loves his country, is truly one if India’s brightest sons, but who can’t help appreciate the progress and bounty afforded by British occupation.. T.K. straddles the fence between what India was, and what India could be. Ultimately, he must decided between the traditions of the past and the promises of the future. At the same time, he has to find a way to maintain his own integrity as a man, one who will witness India’s independence.
Merchant and Ivory films have an indelible sensibility, one that has been maintained since they began making motion pictures. With Before the Rains, Merchant and Ivory return to their well-loved formula: films set in India, intended for English speaking audiences, featuring upper-middle characters wracked with the shame and guilt of mishandling their own passions. Since 1963, Merchant and Ivory have may have deviated from the formula, (with much success), but with the recent passing of co-founder Ismail Merchant, this return to their roots is all the more poignant.
(This review was printed in the Newport Mercury.)
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