Viceroy's House

My parents are from India and my mother's father joined Gandhi on his march to the sea to make salt. He also spent time in British prisons.My mom and I watched this on the 75th anniversary of Indian Independence.I think the movie was well done and visually beautiful. The acting was superb, including that venerable actor, Om Puri. Gillian Anderson was great.I think it captured both the joy and the tragedy of the time. The love story added a personal element.People can debate about how historically accurate this movie was. However, the book it is based on is well regarded, at least from what my uncle and other relatives have told me.Of course, there were some historical details that were glossed over or omitted, because the movie is less than 2 hours long and some time was spent on the love story. However, people who want more details can read the book. My mother, who was born in British India and who was a child during Independence, enjoyed the movie.

I watched this two nights in a row because it was such a touching and well acted movie. That is saying something for the quality of the film, as I rarely ever do such a thing. Beautifully filmed and directed. Every one who starred in it was superb. Though most independent films rarely make it to Academy Award nominations this certainly has its share of excellent actors. The two leads, Hugh Bonneville and Gillian Anderson really became their roles. Gillian even took on the posture of Lady Edwina. I hardly knew it was her. However, the shining stars of this movie were Manesh Dayal, who recently played in "The Hundred Foot Journey" and the young Indian woman who played his love interest. The story is so poignant portraying the macrocosm and microcosm of the impact of partition on the Indian people. I learned a lot that I didn't know about this time period. The director and producer, also directed and produced "Brides and Prejudice" and has proven her skill as a director many times. I highly recommend this film. It is so relevant to the problems in the world today and demonstrates the terrible prejudices that religions harbor against each other; as well as the arrogance of governments who think nothing of disrupting the lives of millions in other countries for their political or economic gain. Also, it should be noted that the Sikhs who are neither Muslim nor HIndu and have always quietly practiced their religion without prejudice against any others, were caught up in the violence and murdered simply because they lived in the areas of conflict.

The CD arrived on time and played perfectly. (Some do not.) I would not in the least call this this another "Juliane Fellowes night sope." (Critic should at least learn how to spell "soap".) First, it's not by Juliane Fellowes", as it was written by Paul Mayeda Berges, Moira Buffini, and Chadha (also director). Fictional, but based on true events in the book, "Freedom at Midnight" by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, LarryIt's a movie well worth watching not only for historical purposes, but because the setting and costuming is wonderful to see. Gillian Anderson does a fine job stepping out of the shadow of "X-files". Though the film is stated as fictional it is based on some very true (and sad) events of the British partition of India. The movie reflects the racial and religious tensions between Muslims (the minority), and the Hindus. It is a story well worth understanding the time when, In August 1947, British India won its independence from the British and split into two new states that would rule themselves. The new countries were India and Pakistan. East Pakistan has since become Bangladesh. This was a very important moment in history. SEE THE MOVIE and READ THE BOOK.

The movie's portrayal of the Mountbatten family, their dedication to the task of handing India over to a government dominated by Nehru and the Congress party, and the complications of that task engendered by the mutual hatred of the Hundu majority and the Muslim minority for each other is masterfully done. Of course, in a two-hour movie there is much that is left out. Most disappointing was the minimization of the role of Ghandi in the process and his selfless efforts to tamp down the communal violence that followed the announcement by the British that they intended to leave India and hand over power in 1947. Most events are done with a view to historical accuracy, but this straightforward attempt at a portrayal of events as they actually happened goes completely off the rails at the end, when it is alleged that the British had planned the partition of the subcontinent all along in order to safeguard a non-existent "oil interest." I have read three well-researched books on this time period, and can find not a single mention of any such intent or the existence of any supporting "secret document." In fact, Sir Cyril Radcliffe was selected to draw the infamous boundary line in the Punjab because he had no knowledge of India, had never so much as visited the subcontinent, and therefore had no communal prejudices. Such a man was the only sort of person that both Nehru and Jinnah could agree upon. Mountabatten proposed a number of old India hands to do that tragic deed but his names were always turned down on the basis of some sort of perceived prejudice, whether against or in favor of one or the other of the parties. It is true, as portrayed in the movie, that Sir Cyril refused to accept the fee agreed upon for his work, but it was because he knew that what he had just done would result in terrible human suffering, not, as the film alleges, because of backstairs treachery on the part of the British government. In spite of this very inaccurate ending to a tragic episode in history the film is beautifully done and well worth purchasing.

Love the scenery and architecture of the Vicery’s house. The characters are great , both the English and Indians…I learned a lot about how Pakistan came about…

In so-called poetic terms India was the jewel in the British crown. Other places in the Empire were important. For instance, South Africa, Hong Kong, Malaya and Singapore. But India was the base of operations, home of the East India Company, a de-facto British state within India that helped the British seize control of the country, a control that lasted for more than 300 years. Britain without India was essentially nothing internationally, just a small offshore island country in Europe. It was India that transformed Britain into a global superpower in the 18th and 19th centuries, a time when India was called British India, not India. Queen Victoria, a person who never set foot in India, was Empress of India, her image everywhere in portraits and stone. She looked motherly, harmless, but her country’s navy and army presence in India ensured that her glowering visage made her a conqueror, a person inescapable.Trade made the East India Company and Britain rich, and wealth in turn made Britain’s military more powerful, thus increasing trade. It was a win-win circular operation for the conquerers and the Indians had no answer to it. They knuckled under. Every Briton in India was treated as a superior by the locals and many a Briton made his name, reputation and fortune in India. When I was first in India in 1990 there was still some bowing and scraping going on and I’m not even British. The old servile attitude dies hard and I got tired of telling some locals to stop calling me Sahib. I was not their master even if some wanted to debase themselves by being my coolie. No, thanks. I think I can somehow manage to pour the tea by myself. Of course I was also a white-skinned talking monkey to them, partly comical. So it wasn’t respect on their part. It was deference, over 300 years of conditioning passed down the generations by the British. That’s what Empire does, deflating a people to a point where they conform to the model of inferiority imposed on them by the conqueror. Naturally, this made the British pompous and proud. India became their parade ground, fortress and prison for the opposition. Small island Britain was small no longer.But it couldn’t last. Nothing does. What happened? How did they kill the goose that laid the golden egg? Actually, they didn’t. The Germans did it for them by starting two world wars, wearing the British down and finally out. Officially Britain won both wars, but actually America did, first with the doughboys, next with D-Day. In the meantime, while this terrible storm of steel rained death and destruction on two generations of Britons, the Empire shrank and British India withered. British resources were spent, and perhaps with them the will to endure. It was over and Gandhi knew it, sensed it. He hit the British where it hurt most — in their pocket books, strike after strike designed to tell them to hop it, quit, go home. By 1946 they got the message. By 1947 India was finally India again. Or sort of. Not the full package. It was carved up, partitioned. It did not emerge whole from British occupation.The compromises were messy, as compromises often are, and this beautiful film shows clearly what they were and what was at stake as Independence loomed in the Summer of 1947. Lord Louis Mountbatten had been brought in by the British to mop up, though Viceroy was the job title or position he was given. A double deal was done behind his back, but more on this in a minute. He arrived by air in India with his wife, Lady Edwina Mountbatten, an intelligent and literate woman, and their younger daughter Pamela, aged 18 in 1947.The mess was mainly twofold, though saying this is a gross oversimplification. The British had controlled everything: the bureaucracies, law courts, police, press, trains, etc. They built a modern infrastructure. Of course they did it for themselves, but the Indians became the beneficiaries of these improvements, the British inadvertently leaving behind their infrastructure for them. The other mess, the bigger one, was political, cultural, religious. India had never been unified even when it was India before the British arrived. It was, and remains, a polyglot of cultures. The three largest cultural groups were Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims. The Hindus and Sikhs could get along at the best of times, but neither did well with the Muslims. The Hindus represented the majority, and thus stood to gain the most politically through Independence. Their leader was Jawaharlal Nehru, who would indeed of course go on to become India’s first Prime Minister. He was against Partition. The Muslims may be unruly and unhappy as a minority, but a unified, independent India would be theirs as well, not just a Hindu and Sikh state. That was Nehru’s logic. But the Muslims under the wily Muhammad Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League, were having none of it. No voice and power, no opportunities, no real protection — no way. Without another new independent state to co-exist with the new India, Muslims could not live properly. They needed their own security. Under the British all Indians in a sense were relegated to the status of servants. With the Master gone, the old divisions and animosities returned. The Hindus and Muslims were at each other’s throats.What could be done? What could the British do to be fair and just in a moment of magnanimity when they were leaving? Mountbatten was installed to see that the game and rules were respected, that the Indians behaved as gentlemen toward one another. Or so it seemed. Mountbatten himself was operating in good faith. He was actually a man who loved India for the right reasons, for its rich history and culture. His wife was the same. They were cultivated people.Churchill was different in temperament. He was a political animal and the game could sometimes be dirty, so he learned to play it that way when it suited him. He and others in Whitehall did the double dealing behind Mountbatten’s back. Even before Mountbatten arrived in India a secret deal had been worked out with Jinnah and the Muslim League. Partition was a fait accompli but Mountbatten and Nehru did not know this. Thus the protracted and difficult negotiations in the Viceroy’s house were a charade. Jinnah playacted and bluffed his way through them. Mountbatten, on the other hand, had many sleepless nights because of them. Nehru too was constantly unsettled. The fate of India came down to their decisions in this house. Or so Mountbatten and Nehru thought.When the ruse was exposed to Mountbatten by a British lawyer hired to help draw up plans for Independence, he exploded, betrayed by his own people, the perfidious British, or at least the politicos among them. The maps for Partition had already been drawn up. In the ensuing debacle India would not emerge whole at the moment of Independence. And so it was that at the stroke of midnight on August 14, 1947, two nations were born on the sub-continent the following day, a new smaller India and a new Muslim state to the west — Pakistan.Chaos, confusion, violence. As many as 10 million people were displaced from their homes and villages. The Muslim refugees trudged west. Hindus in the Hindu Kush and elsewhere travelled east, back to the motherland. Heat, dust, disease, fatigue, food and water shortages. More than a million people died on this trail of tears, families and whole communities torn asunder. A tragedy, a humanitarian crisis too immense to contain and control.To this day the wounds have not fully healed. Kashmir and the Punjab are areas were unrest seems permanent, the borders between the two countries still heavily patrolled.An ugly story then in many ways. But the paradox of India is its beauty, a place rich in colour and culture. The splendour of Viceroy House is magnificent. They called it a house but in fact it was a regal palace, an edifice attended to by over 500 servants. When the Mountbattens arrive someone in their entourage remarks that Viceroy House makes Buckingham Palace look like a bungalow. That one made me laugh out loud. But that’s India, a place where the rich lavishly pour it on with opulent delight.Yet the filmmaker (Gurinder Chadha) was wise to make the drama about more than just history and politics. Love is also present in it, and a love of the most intriguing kind — the forbidden variety. The break-up of India is mirrored in microcosm by the love of a Hindu and Muslim. The Hindu young man is Jeet Kumar, and the love of his life is Aalia, a beautiful young Muslim woman. Thus they become an Indian version of Romeo and Juliet, though the arc of their story will not exactly mirror that of Shakespeare’s young lovers.The leads are wonderful: Hugh Bonneville as Lord Mountbatten and Gillian Anderson as Lady Edwina. Gillian is American, but you would never know it here. She’s as posh as they come with her clipped syllables, an utter joy to watch. I love her in all her roles. The star-crossed lovers are also good: Manish Dayal as Jeet Kumar and Huma Qureshi as Aalia. They dominate every scene in which they and their love appear. Somehow, despite everything, you want them to endure and be happy.It wasn’t easy, to say the least, to reduce three centuries of British rule in India to two hours of celluloid, or in this case to a thin plastic DVD disc. For this feat alone this beautiful film should be watched. Part history lesson, part drama, part love story, it’s a masterpiece crafted by Ms. Chadha. She has astonished me with her vision and artistry.

There are two stories in this, one of Lord Mountbatten and his family who oversaw the events of Partition and its horrific aftermath, and the other of two employees in his service, a Muslim girl and Hindu boy who fall in love. With a run time of 100 minutes, that is asking a lot, and this is a gallop through clashes with Nehru, Jinnah and Gandhi, who have different solutions for the problem of the insecure Muslim minority in India, until finally, reluctantly, the country is divided, Pakistan is born, along with the slaughter of millions and the mass migration of 14 million people along religious lines. Meanwhile one wonders whether Mountbatten and his wife, although they loved India and did their best, would ever really do more than skate on the surface of the problems they encountered, leaving distrust and unrest behind that to an extent lasts till today.Events are interspersed with archive footage of riots and newsreels, bringing the horror home in sharp relief.As does the statement at the end of the film that the Director, Gurinder Chadha's Sikh grandfather was forced to abandon Pakistan in 1947 and flee, a family member dying of starvation during the dreadful journey.The casting is excellent, Hugh Bonneville seems destined to remain upstairs, while Gillian Anderson is superb as his wife Edwina (who died at the untimely age of 58) although her affair with Nehru is omitted. Another film, perhaps.

Didn’t watch DVD until April so can’t return. Video is faulty. Keeps stopping. Cannot watch.

When I started to watch the money, I though I would not like it, the main character did not look like Lord Mountbatten. The characters played by Hugh Bonneville and Gillian Anderson are very well done. I enjoyed the movie thoroughly. Would highly recommend it.

Extremely well directed, scripted and acted historical account of Lord (Dickie) and Lady (Edwina) Mountbatten (Hugh Bonneville and Gillian Anderson, respectively) striving together, primarily with M.K.Gandhi and Nehru to help India transition from being a British governed colony to an independent democratic nation of 400,000,000 Hindu, Sikh and Muslim citizens. There's a whole lot more to the history; what's more, a true and amazing love story is threaded throughout the reenactments, real news reel footage, and other first hand 1947-8 shot video footage of the world's largest transition of international power. Primarily what M.K. Gandhi'd striven nonviolently towards since 1909, India's freedom from British governance, Lord Mountbatten, an ever beloved British Royal Naval hero and very popular diplomat, became India's last Viceroy, within the massive palace kept by 500 Hindu, Sikh and Muslim workers. The director's Euro-Asia ethnicities helps render a uniquely insightful perspective on what became known as "Partition," (the Jinnah led, Muslim schism that created Pakistan, thereby destroying the lives of over 40,000 Indians, during the process. The director's deep familial interest is beautifully depicted to an emotionally riveting degree. It's high time the rest of the world's population knew the intimate details that are conveyed about the deeply personal complexities that erupted during India's emancipation. Lord and Lady Mountbatten weren't spared bearing the brunt of the struggles. Their daughter had a hand in advising the director as well. This creates all the more credence to the finest of details, down to each uniform of the various palace workers. The sense of authenticity is that which can be immersed into as if a first hand witness. Exquisite film-making in every sense. With all of those terrific highlights, there's a standout one about which to rave: Gillian Anderson's incarnation of Lady Edwina Mountbatten. As the direct herself says, Anderson's nuances are "spot on."