ansin Kudos to Santosh Sivan for creating a stellar landscape to depict a compelling tale of love, dedication, simplicity and deception. It is a simple story. Yet, there is hardly a time when the story doesn't grip you. Santosh's ability to weave characters with diverse personalities in a single canvas is remarkable.The story simmers in the first half. Santosh allows you to connect with each character, unveiling their personalities one at a time. The scenery is marvelous. However, the movie quickly changes gears when a seemingly innocuous event, earlier in the movie, triggers off a never ending domino. You cannot help, but empathize with the characters, as they try to get hold of the situation.Definitely worth a watch!

R SN Being a native of Kerala and not knowing much of this movie, I went because my favorite Indian actors Nandita Das and Rahul Bose were in it. My hubby and I were in for a stunningly visual treat of our home state in India and were jumping for joy. Every frame was pure, with shadows and light and filters that just transported you and wanting to see more. I would liked the movie more if it had been stretched a little longer and see more deeper delving into the characters and the village life. Instead a limited dimension was presented. I was a little disappointed and left feeling like something wasn't complete in the application of the story. While the film focuses around the central characters,not enough time was spent on how the setup started but the movie picks-up almost mid-stream it felt like and therefore a little incomplete. There were seeming contradictions in the movie. exploration of each of the characters could have been done more deeply. I was sorry to see that Nandita Das was relegated to such a minimal role. Rahul Bose whose phenomenal acting could have been explored profoundly was also limited to more of a silent portrayal while his eyes spoke volumes. I wasn't sure where his loyalties were or whether he was really trying to live in two worlds and ultimately what is it that he stood to gain in the way of empowerment. The storyline is simple and did a good job around Roach's role and his moral conflicts. The actress who portrayed his wife as brief as it was very good and believable. The supporting actors all acted well (kudos to Indrajit and Lal and Mr.Thilakan as well-it was awesome to see these phenomenal actors on the big screen through such an artistic lens. It was a little discomforting to see the far from the truth portrayal of the tribal ritual. My huge kudos to Mr. Sivan- the quality of the cinematography is pristine and flawless and timeless. I hope you'll blaze forward with more courage at exploring in-depth portrayals of Kerala even more.

Chris Knipp Somerset Maugham was a master of colonial adultery. His short stories are full of it, men and women in this or that corner of the British Empire getting themselves into devastating marital fixes. In 'Before the Rains,' the Indian cinematographer and director Santosh Sivan muddles his tropical tragedy of adultery as Maugham would never have done.Henry Moores (Linus Roache) is a planter in the Kerala province of India where a fresh revolt against the British Raj is just brewing; it's 1937. He is having an affair with his beautiful native housekeeper while his wife and young son are away on an extended stay in England. On an idyll gathering honey in a sacred grove Moores and his housekeeper are spotted by two little boys while making love (though, lucky for him, they don't recognize Moores). Shortly thereafter Moores' wife and son return to India and trouble ensues that disturbs the house and the planter's ambitious project to build a freight road up over the hills. He was meaning to expand from tea into spices--generously promising to share the resulting profits with his local assistant, T.K. (Rahul Bose). T.K. is a childhood friend of Sajani, the housekeeper (Nandita Das) and lives on the premises, having in his possession a pistol Moores has just given him as a reward for his help and loyalty. Three guesses what that's going to lead to.In Maugham's stories the equations are simple and relentless. So are they here, but the power and focus of the story are undermined by the way not just one but all three of the main characters try to dodge the inevitable while the lovely lens of Sivan dwells overlong on the scenery indoors and out. Sajani is understandably unable to accept that she's dispensable. Moores, who is either spineless or a fantasist, tries to pretend nothing is amiss. T.K., who has one foot uneasily planted in each of two opposing worlds, thinks he can protect his Sahib and still not become an outcast in the village. But the village is a place to whose laws T.K. remains subject and in which Sajani still lives with an angry husband. The latter is already suspicious of her even before the boys tell their story and is permitted by the local code to beat her, just because he cares.Maugham would have brought things to their highest pitch in the awful moments when Moores's wife Laura (the usually excellent Jennifer Ehle, rather wasted here) looks for cheer or affection or even just ease from her husband and he cannot oblige. But Sivan hasn't enough time to draw the full value from that. He's busy with too many other things--the trap Sajani gets into; T.K.'s dilemma; the impending revolt; delays that may keep the road project from its necessary completion before the monsoon. There's much about the village system of justice, including a novel test of a defendant's truthfulness. There's even the repeated worry that Moores will lose the loan he took out for the road project. Maugham would wisely have paid a lot less attention to anything peripheral to the psychological and moral drama. The trouble is that Sivan's a bit like T.K.: he wants to work on both sides of the stream, shine his light on the colonials with their linens and khaki and bathtubs (and, like in Ang Lee's overwrought 'Lust Caution,' on their shiny period motor cars)--and also look into the village culture and the bonds of Indian family life. Besides which, he can't stop training his lens on the pretty surroundings, even though at this point they're certainly not a concern of the principals and shouldn't be ours.Everybody plays their role, nothing more: psychological subtlety is lacking. Sajani is beautiful and passionate and disappointed. Moores pleases everyone and no one. T.K. is sweaty and loyal. Moores' wife is confused, her final realization of everything coming in an instant with buggy eyes--no time for the slow burn. Though T.K. is pivotal, he isn't really interesting. We don't get to look into his mental confusion. This is no 'Passage to India', and subtle insights into racism and the breakdown of communication between cultures aren't forthcoming. As so easily happens when too many balls are being juggled, the pacing suffers and events just gradually lumber along. There's not much danger of giving away the ending because it's a muddle.The choice of a specific point of view would have sharpened and intensified everything. In the absence of that, the main characters lack complexity. Moores as played by Roache is almost a blank, hard to care about one way or the other. If only he were either a true romantic, or an obvious cad, but no such luck. If only T.K. had doubts, or were more foolish or overeager. Of course we care about poor Sajani, but this is most clearly not from her point of view: once she's in trouble, she is mostly off-screen. Ironically Moores' young son Peter (Leopold Benedict), though he hasn't many lines, seems as interesting as the others because he at least has an arresting face. We thought Merchant Ivory was a dead operation since Merchant himself literally passed away in 2005, but this is attributed to Merchant Ivory. It has the Merchant Ivory gloss but not the Merchant Ivory glow; in fact Ivory had nothing to do with the production. The director's earlier 'The Terrorist' was a vividly claustrophobic little story; interestingly, it was entirely and intensely from the protagonist's point of view, the thing that is so lacking here. Sivan has drifted, unfortunately, into a more conventional, diffuse mode.

jkbonner1 I give this film a 10 that I hope will counteract the 7.7 rating at the IMDb. This film is a gem that is rarely seen today at the theaters. It takes place in the southwestern Indian state of Kerala in what appears to be the 1930s.From its very beginning we understand that the British plantation owner, Henry Moores (played by Linus Roache) is having an affair with his beautiful Indian maid servant, Sajani (played by Nandita Das). Both are married. He to a beautiful English woman who at the start of the film is away in London with their son visiting her father; Sajani to a local villager. Given these personal circumstances and the times and place, a tradition-bound village and vocal demonstrations against the British Raj, we also understand as clearly as the sun traverses the midday sky that their fate is sealed. It is inevitable from the moment they first embraced each other. But rather than experiencing ennui from this foreknowledge, it heightens our involvement as we are drawn into the characters and the drama of their lives. I must also point out the splendid acting of Jennifer Ehle, who plays Moores's wife after she returns with their son to their plantation home. Ehle captures perfectly the duped wife whose female intuitions lead her to the dark truth of her husband.On a larger scope, this film can be seen in a more complex light as well. Moores symbolizes the hubris and individualism of Western man hell-bent on bending the world to his will through his know-how and his technology. He has seduced Sajani, who perceives him as a liberator, freeing her from her brutal, tradition-bound husband whom she was forced to marry. Moores's know-how is manifested in the film by the building of a road impregnable to the monsoon rains, and his technology symbolized by his pistol, which Moores bestows on his Indian steward, T.K., for T.K.'s complicity in Moores's affair with Sajani. T.K. is played with summit precision and perfection by Rahul Bose, who vacillates between the ancient traditions and codes of his village and the new ways of his boss, Moores, whom T.K. also sees as a liberator from the ancient village traditions. In the end it is T.K. who holds power over Moores.This individualism had pervaded Western culture for five hundred years and along with the Western scientific/technological dynamo generating a new world is its most pervasive and recognizable hallmark. It has enabled Western man to shuck off the accumulation of thousands of years of cultural accretions and to construct a different world from one bound by traditions and customs. I say here "a different world", not necessarily "a better world". For technology is a double-edged sword. As it liberates us, it also erases our links with the past. And once bereft of the past, humans are left rudderless in the great stream of time.It is still a very moot point whether the individualism of the modern world will ultimately lead to the Great Debacle. Whether this conclusion to the story of humanity will be as implacable as the fate of Sajani and Moores remains to be seen, but many disturbing events in the world suggest that it may happen. If it does, then humanity will again be flung back to its tribes and its villages, and the heights scaled by its vaunting technology will evoke only vague and distant memories in those tribes-people and in those villagers.