Viceroy’s House ** (2017, Hugh Bonneville, Gillian Anderson, Michael Gambon, Manish Dayal, Huma Qureshi, Om Puri, Lily Travers, Simon Callow, Simon Williams) – Movie Review

Hugh Bonneville stars as Lord Louis Mountbatten, who is appointed final Viceroy of India, with the job of overseeing the transition of British India to independence in 1947.

Director Gurinder Chadha means well but has bitten off far more than she can chew both budget wise and intellectually. I’m sorry but you can’t set a trite and superficial Romeo and Juliet-style love story across the main political wrangling story of the in-fighting for India and Pakistan.

The script by Paul Mayeda Berges, Moira Buffini and Gurinder Chadha is the main problem, It just isn’t up to the task in hand. Chadha’s film is bound to be compared with Richard Attenborough’s eight Oscar-winning Gandhi (1982) and be found lacking. The effort to make Viceroy’s House seem relevant, significant or important shows. The awkward, clumsy script comes complete with actor-challenging dialogue and much fact-led historical exposition. And it always seems a little film instead of the epic that is needed.

Bonneville is a good actor and makes a decent job, but he’s not Mountbatten. He’s just not. He doesn’t look like him or seem like him in any way. Gillian Anderson’s Lady Edwina Mountbatten is a brave try, with her strapped-on period upper-crust English accent and old-style Raj manners, head permanently to one side. It’s fussy and actory, a bit showy, but it kind of works. At least it is interesting.

On the other hand, Michael Gambon’s villainous General Hastings Ismay is a boring turn, neither interesting nor convincing. Simon Callow is OK as British map expert Cyril Radcliffe, the man apparently appointed to come up with a new map diving India, though the evil British powers that be already have a devious plan afoot.

Manish Dayal and Huma Qureshi make a cute and appealing couple as the star-crossed lovers Jeet Kumar and Aalia Noor, who are on opposite sides when India is partitioned, opposite both religious and then geographically. Om Puri (1950–2017) has one of his last roles as Aalia’s blind, much adored dad, Ali Rahim Noor. Along with Dayal and Qureshi’s, it is a poorly written, under-developed role that just won’t spark up to be involving or meaningful.

However, Neeraj Kabi makes a strong impression as Mahatma Gandhi and so does Denzil Smith as Muhammad Ali Jinnah, both partly blurring memories of previous actors who played these significant roles.

Do you know what? Chadha should have decided which story she wanted to tell – Mountbattten’s or Kumar and Noor’s. If we’d spent two hours with star-crossed romance or two hours with political in-fighting, we could have had a good film. Now we’ve got two broken halves of a not very good film.

I get it, nobody cares about history, about what happened in 1947. So we have to have a perennially relevant, young people-led romance. This was a mistake. The old people playing politics is fascinating. It would make a great mini-series. That one’s place is of course on TV. Why didn’t the BBC finance that instead?

Also in the cast are Lily Travers as Lady Pamela Hicks, Simon Williams as Archie Wavell, his real-life wife Lucy Fleming as Lady Wavell and Roberta Taylor as Miss Reading.

Gurinder Chadha is the maker of the excellent Bend It Like Beckham, Bride & Prejudice and Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

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