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Film a metaphor of British colonialism

No nation dissects the less savory aspects of its imperial history quite so resolutely as the British, whose books and films on the subject move from reasoned critique to conscience-stricken mea culpas to, occasionally, the extremes of angry self-flagellation. A decided change from those arrogant times when "British law made the world England."

India, in particular, has been the centerpiece of much post-colonial British self-examination. And so it is in Santosh Sivan's "Before the Rains," albeit joined to an Indian perspective.

With echoes of E.M. Forster's "A Passage to India," an appealing languor, and a moral depth that recalls "The Painted Veil," this Merchant-Ivory "presentation" offers character relationships which are, in the director's own words, a "metaphor for the promise and the tragic flaw of British colonialism."

In addition to the tragic elements of the story and the themes that still resonate today, Sivan's hypnotically shot picture also tries to convey a sense of hope.

Set in 1937, the film takes its basic scaffolding from the Israeli film "Red Roofs."

Though the principal characters in the movie — road-builder Henry Moores (Linus Roache), his foreman and friend T.K. (Rahul Bose) and Moores' Indian housekeeper Sajani (Nandita Das) — try to bridge the cultural chasm, they are made to suffer for it.

Sivan layers his film with metaphors, Moores' rough-hewn road chief among them. Its construction, which seeks to open a traditional civilization to a commercial one, suggests an act of violence on nature. Sivan says he illustrated this by shooting the film in a style reminiscent of pre-Raphaelite paintings "in which the Earth itself carries sentiment and is full of symbolism and meaning. The characters are thus miniaturized in the emotional landscape and imagery of the Garden of Eden, lost again to guilt and sin."

That may be a bit melodramatic, and the film can be held to account for a certain thinness of plot.

But Sivan knows what he is after, and finds it.

Reach Bill Thompson at bthompson@postandcourier.com or 937-5707.

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