Guest Author - Peggy Maddox
Just about everyone has heard about Slumdog Millionaire (2008) which garnered 10 Oscar nominations and won eight of them.
But what about Before the Rains?
Like Slumdog, Before the Rains is set in India and features an Indian cast. Unlike Slumdog, Before the Rains had an Indian director, Santosh Sivan.
Although made in 2007, Rains had a 2008 U.S. release so, I assume, it would have been eligible for the 2008 Oscar nominations. Yet this splendid film received very little attention and no Oscar nominations.
The critics at Rotten Tomatoes recognized the quality of the cinematography, but damned the film as a "soapy melodrama," saying that it "lacks emotional resonance." They gave it a measly 48% on the tomatometer.
The film is set in 1937 in British-dominated India, a time when the Indian Independence movement was getting underway. According to a Wikipedia article, the predominant thread of criticism in most of the reviews was that the film "stuck to an old-school format and failed to stir emotion or engage the viewer."
I suggest that the critics just prefer their melodrama to have a modern setting.
Nothing could be more melodramatic than Slumdog Millionaire, yet the Rotten Tomatoes critics gave it 94% on their tomatometer. The consensus was: "visually dazzling...emotionally resonant...entertaining and powerful."
Here's a definition of melodrama from Merriam-Webster:
a work (as a movie or play) characterized by extravagant theatricality and by the predominance of plot and physical action over characterization
This is a definition that applies more to Slumdog Millionaire with its chases and gunfights than it does to the deliberate, character-based story of Before the Rains.
Before the Rain has a classical feeling to it. It compares favorably to the 1984 Oscar phenomenon Passage to India. The cinematography is stunning, moving from panoramic shots to screen-filling close-ups. It may be "old school" in the depiction of European manners of 70 years ago, but it is thoroughly up-to-date in the matter of cultural attitudes and conflicts.
In 2009 American popular thought, adultery is no big deal. Sit-coms glorify it every evening during prime time television. Maybe that's why the critics decided this was a ho-hum movie.
Before the Rains is not a love story and it is not chiefly about adultery. It's about the arrogance and cowardice of power, and the myth of "multiculturalism."
In the movie the imperialists are the British in India, but the attitude that enables Henry Moores to ruin Sajana and sacrifice T.K. is the same attitude that shapes American thinking about Iraq and other non-Western countries and our "mission" to bring our way of life to them.
As the movie begins, we are shown two men, one English and one Indian, who are planning to build a road that will open the hills to the spice trade. The men are depicted as equals. They drink from the same canteen. They wear identical shirts. Only after the relationship between the men is established are we shown that the Englishman is in love with an Indian woman. She is breath-takingly beautiful and at first it seems that they could be husband and wife, but it soon becomes clear that Sajana is domestic help and Moores has a wife and son.
The story plays out with a sense of inevitability that marks every great tragedy.
Before the Rains is a beautiful and timely movie. Watch it and see if you don't agree that the critics missed the boat on this one.
