This philosophy sounds like recycled fortune cookies but turns out, in the end, to have been the simple truth. Godbole ( Alec Guinness), who meets every crisis with perfect equanimity, and who believes that what will be, will be. Meanwhile, we meet some of the other local characters, including Dr. It accomplishes just what is needed, suggesting that in Miss Quested the forces of sensuality and repression run a great deal more deeply than her sexually constipated fiancé is ever likely to suspect. Miss Quested's temple visit is not in Forster, but has been added by Lean (who wrote his own screenplay). Miss Quested wanders by accident into the ruins of another temple, populated by sensuous and erotic statuary, tumbled together, overgrown by vegetation. Aziz, who is captivated by her gentle kindness. Moore goes walking by a temple pool by moonlight, and meets the earnest young Dr. Both women want to see the 'real India' - a wish that is either completely lacking among the locals, or is manfully repressed. Moore ( Peggy Ashcroft) sail to India, where Miss Quested is engaged to marry the priggish local British magistrate in a provincial backwater. The charges and the trial fill the second half of Lean's 'A Passage to India.' Lean brings us to that point by a series of perfectly modulated, quietly tension-filled scenes in which Miss Quested ( Judy Davis) and the kindly Mrs.

Aziz is innocent of the charges later brought against him - of the attempted rape of Miss Quested. So in the film version we know, or think we know, that Dr. Aziz is at the time if you are offstage in a novel, you can be anywhere, but if you are offstage in a movie, you are definitely not where the camera is looking. But because he is dealing with a visual medium, he cannot make it a mystery where Dr.

And so the Indian man and the British woman climb the last path alone, at a time when England's rule of India was based on an ingrained, semi-official racism, and some British, at least, nodded approvingly at Kipling's 'East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.' In Forster's novel, it is never clear exactly what it was that happened to Miss Quested after she wandered alone into one of the caves.ĭavid Lean's film leaves that question equally open. One by one, members of the party drop out, until finally only Miss Quested, from England, is left. Aziz leads an expedition to the Marabar Caves. 'A Passage to India' is especially tricky, because the central event in the novel is something that happens offstage, or never happens at all - take your choice. They are too filled with ambiguities, and movies have a way of making all their images seem like literal fact. Great novels do not usually translate well to the screen.

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