Viceroy's House

It is 1947 and Lord Mountbatten (Hugh Bonneville) has been sent to Delhi as the last Viceroy of India with the task of handing India back to its people within twelve months. After 300 years, British rule is coming to a close.

The story takes place mainly inside the walls of the Viceroy's House where ‘Dickie’ Mountbatten resides with his wife Edwina (Gillian Anderson) and daughter Lady Pamela (Lily Travers) along with their many many Hindu, Muslim and Sikh servants.

The political elite, namely Nehru (Tanveer Ghani) of the Indian Congress, Jinnah (Denzil Smith) of the Muslim League, Mahatma Gandhi (Neeraj Kabi) the revered leader of the independence movement and others, all visit the House for meetings as they wrangle over the terms of independence whilst in the country as a whole riots erupt.

Gandhi, Nehru and Mountbatten (initially) all wanted a single nation of two faiths but the London Government, for its own political reasons, preferred to partition the country along religious lines. Namely to create a new Muslim nation of Pakistan with a downsized India populated mostly by Hindus. It was this ‘Mountbatten Plan’ that was eventually agreed and with the British army too war weary to cope with the continued rioting, Mountbatten advanced the date for the transfer of power by six months.

The actual border for partition was decided by a London barrister called Cyril Radcliffe (Simon Callow) but what Mountbatten didn't know, was that he had been well and truly stitched up by London. The whole partition plan had already been put together years ago by Winston Churchill and he was simply sent there as the fall guy to deliver it.

Partition led to the uprooting of 14 million people and millions more were killed in the resulting turmoil. Real newspaper headlines and archive footage give weight to the story creating an educating docu-drama. 

The Mountbattens to their credit stay on in India to try to help in any way they could while the consequences of partition still reverberate to this day, seven decades later.

Sadly, to give the film a bit more general appeal, there is also a love story between a Hindu servant Jeet (Manish Dayal) and his intended Muslim bride Aalia (Huma Qureshi). They quickly find themselves in conflict with their own communities. This diversion is a shame, as it takes screen time away from the main story and leaves the film perhaps not as punchy as it could have been.

That said, the film is still a fascinating watch about an important piece of post-war history albeit mainly from the British perspective.

The film is directed by Gurinder Chadha whose own family were caught up in the events that unfolded.

Shadow Dancer

We haven't seen an IRA thriller in a while, at one point you couldn't move for them. ‘Shadow Dancer’ is set in Belfast in 1993, to the backdrop of the ongoing peace process which resulted in the IRA ceasefire the following year. First though, we rewind to 1973, when Collette McVey was but a little girl. When she offloads an errand to the shops on her little brother, he comes back dead, hit by a stray bullet in the street.

Fast forward twenty years and Collette (Andrea Riseborough) is in London about to plant a bomb on the underground. Only, the authorities are on to her and she gets captured. They have enough information to put her away, where she will lose her son or, they tell her, she could become an informant and work for MI5.

She agrees, way too easily, which is one of a few things that are wrong with an otherwise impressive film. A lot of things seem a little too easy, not only is Colette easily turned into an informant but back in Belfast, although they are instantly suspicious of her return, particularly as CCTV coverage of her had featured on the TV News but nobody makes too much of it. They certainly don’t think to follow her to her regular meetings with Mac (Clive Owen) her MI5 handler. Perhaps because most of these meetings seem to happen in the pouring rain.

There is good tension in the film though. Gerry, the local IRA commander, is the one man who is suspicious. He knows there’s an informant in their midst and will happily use a little water torture on Colette’s brother to find out if it’s her. Possibly Gerry’s character and his role could have been developed further but the film doesn’t really dip into the politics of the situation and the full horrors of terrorism are largely absent from the screen.

The film prefers instead to pinpoint the distrust and paranoia on both sides. Whereas Colette has to betray her own side and family, Mac has his own problems, Gillian Anderson. Anderson appears briefly as a senior MI5 Officer putting obstacles in Mac’s path as she keeps him in the dark as regards the bigger picture in infiltrating this particular IRA cell. He starts to feel responsible for Colette when it becomes apparent she is just a decoy to take the heat off their main informant.

It's a good film, intelligent, suspenseful and well-acted. Riseborough is excellent and even Owen is sort of ok. It's just lacking in a bit of extra oomph.