VICEROY’S HOUSE

Review: About Lord Mountbatten’s time as Viceroy of India. He is tasked with overseeing the transition of British India to independence. There is conflict as the different sides clash because of monumental change.
Director: Gurinder Chadha
Actors: Gillian Anderson, Michael Gambon, Simon Callow, Hugh Bonneville, Lily Travers, Manish Dayal, Terence Harvey, Om Puri and Denzil Smith
Year: 2017
Genre: Art House, Biography, Drama, History and International
Conclusion: 3/5
This is a film that has had mixed reviews from the film critics. As good as Hugh Bonneville is, I just can’t help but think of him in Downton Abbey and him being in period costume. I was worried about seeing this film as from the movie poster I thought it would be too downtonesque although I was pleasantly surprised. Om Puri previously played Nahari in Gandhi (1982) which is a very similar story. A very interesting story as I knew nothing about it beforehand. There is a bit of a romantic story between two couples going on in the sense of Romeo and Juliet. I could see what the director was doing but I did think that this particular story did get lost while everything else was going on around it. I do think it is a complicated film to make. You could say that she was trying to fit too much into the story and maybe wanted to tell every detail. I just found it a bit too confusing for my liking. There is one scene where Lord and Lady Mountbatten promise each other that they will “stay on” at the end of independence, obviously they didn’t. The scenes that I found the most moving was at the very end when they showed real footage of what happened. A solid piece of history from director Gurinder Chadha.