Indian summer... Heat and Dust (1983), BFI re-release – now showing!

I must admit that I was prevented by student “cool” from catching this first time round and the snobbery of the middle-brow persisted with The Guardian’s Sam Jordison once describing Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s source novel as like the Coldplay of literature; “far too dull to loathe”. Well, to 19-year old Paul and Sam, I have to say you’re both missing the point. This Merchant Ivory film, with a screenplay from the author herself, is far more impressive and gently hard-hitting than I expected.

Coming after Ghandi (1982) – which I did watch as “revision” for my Further Paper on Indian Independence – and before the hits of The Jewel in the Crown (1984), The Far Pavilions (1984) and A Passage to India (1984), Heat and Dust underperformed…  but I hope that now’s the time to put that right. This carefully-crafted film has probably never looked better following a stunning 4k digital restoration and has been critically much better regarded as the years have past with Sight and Sound describing it as one of Merchant Ivory’s best films.

Greta Scacchi and Nickolas Grace

The cast is stunningly good especially the two female leads, Julie Christie and Greta Scacchi, here in her breakthrough role and a player with so much screen presence some scenes might as well be a monologue. The two women play related roles across time, with Scacchi in the 1920s as Olivia Rivers wife of a British officer who mysteriously disappears only to be followed up 60 years later by her great niece,

But they’re not alone, Nickolas Grace, who was present at the screening I saw, is superb as Harry Hamilton-Paul, an ex-pat pretty much in exile, addicted to the freedoms of India, and far away from the restrictions of blighty. He gives a febrile performance as someone who talks home in the full knowledge that this is no longer London.

The Julie...

Produced by Ismail Merchant and directed by James Ivory this is not a love letter to the colonial period but to the people of the time, who whatever their origins contributed to change, no matter how slight. It looks stunning and Walter Lassally’s cinematography can rarely have been better served since the film’s initial release.

Half of the film is set in the present with Anne (Christie) investigating the past of her Great Aunt Olivia (Scacchi) who mysteriously dropped off the family radar in the twenties. The two women’s stories are deftly run in parallel in order to show their paths towards a greater understanding of themselves and each other. Both follow their hearts and whereas in Olivia’s case this meant “disgrace” for Anne it points her towards freedom. There’s a single moment when both are in the same frame, as Anne gazes in to the bungalow in which her Aunt lived and she is shown in reflection with her lover, the Nawab of Khatm (Shashi Kapoor).

It's hot and there's a fair amount of particles in the air

None of this is isolated from the politics and enduring issues of the sub-continent, no film about the British in India could be and the Nawab is suspected of being involved with banditry and, naturally, anti-colonial activity. He couldn’t be further from Olivia’s husband Douglas Rivers (Christopher Cazenove), a civil servant in the colonial administration in Satipur. The young couple are very much in love but Douglas has a view on the role his partner should play that becomes sadly at odds with her own desires. Olivia wants to immerse herself in their new environment and she most certainly does not want to be sent away with the other wives during the most heat of peak summer.

She is alienated by the expats and increasingly seeks the company of the Nawab, aided by Harry… meanwhile, two generations down the line Anne becomes more and more immersed in her cultural environment, staying with the family of civil servant Inder Lal (Zakir Hussain), in the area her Great Aunt once lived. She becomes drawn to Inder as he guides her through the city and her rediscovery of her aunt. She also meets Chid (Charles McCaughan), an American convert to Hindu mysticism… he’s an earnest phony of course but illustrates the gap still existing between the first and third worlds… Anne is making a deeper connection and will, as her aunt before her, have a fateful decision to make…

Shashi Kapoor and Greta Scacchi

It’s a simple enough story but one to luxuriate in; a more philosophical work than, say Coldplay’s Yellow… there’s also a grand cameo from Madhur Jaffrey as the chain-smoking Begum Mussarat Jahan.

I’ll end with a quote from Roger Ebert – it’s a well-established blogger-cheat when you cannot hope to match him – he wrote that the film treated both of its love stories “… with seriousness; these are not romances, but decisions to dissent. It is fully at home in its times and places... And when it is over, we're a little surprised to find that it is angry, too. Angry that women of every class and every system, women British and Indian, Women of the 1920s and of the 1980s, are always just not quite the same caste as men".

The film has an extended run at the BFI in March and is now re-released across the UK – further details on the BFI site. Do not miss it on the big screen... you'll find yourself a little lost.