Viceroy's House * * * *

The Mountbatten's ask a local for direction.

     I knew about Gandhi and I knew that Pakistan was a nation born out of the partition of India but that’s about it (embarrassing hey?) So I really enjoyed and appreciated Viceroy’s House which took a nincompoop like me by the hand and enlightened me somewhat on the time and the circumstances in a very clear, lucid and informative manner, all couched in a visually splendid and moving drama.

     Those who are more informed than me might regard Viceroy’s House as simplistic, but I think to nitpick would be unfair.  It is, after all, about the big picture.

     In nearly every scene we are reminded of the magnitude, and the gravity of the situation. What will happen looms over their head.  A nation is going to be ripped apart. A line will be drawn through it.  Its people will have to decide which side of the border they are going to live on.

     The key players are all featured, but the story is primarily told through Lord Mountbatten and his wife Edwina who were given the poison chalice of having to oversee the proceedings. The roles of Lord and Countess Mountbatten are sympathetically and convincingly played by Hugh Bonneville and Gillian Anderson.
India was like a vessel that was breaking apart and all Mountbatten could do was hold it together as best he could.  And he knew that it was three hundred years of colonisation that had created the situation of a people divided.  It could be said that Mountbatten made a mess of the task, but given the difficulty of the situation, the timeline and the various persuasive forces it was virtually impossible to have a smooth transition. The fighting had begun way before he arrived. In a way Lord Mountbatten could be seen as another victim in this huge upheaval. He was a man simply wishing to serve his country and India thus our sympathies remain with him.  More importantly our sympathy go to fourteen million people who are displaced overnight and forced to relocate - some from villages that families had lived in for hundreds of years. Worse was the bloody civil unrest that followed - mostly shown to us through news footage of the time.

      As a love interest and a symbolic story we are also given a Muslim girl and a Hindu boy who are staff at The House and find themselves as star-crossed lovers damned to be torn apart, they are a bit contrived. However, though through them we get to see village life and the brewing unrest between people who had been good friends and neighbors for years.

Like most historical drama's the less you know about the real facts, the more you are likely to enjoy it and overall I found Viceroy’s House a riveting, informative, and fascinating film (which might say more about me than the film).