Viceroy’s House review: A soapy political saga

Viceroy’s House is undoubtedly filmmaker Gurinder Chadha’s most ambitious project till date. Right at the onset, viewers are forewarned with Winston Churchill’s words, “History is written by the victors”, and with that Chadha sets out to whitewash the involvement of the last Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten, in the decision to divide India. The famous Churchill line forms the backbone of the film’s political track, but what embodies the human face of the tragedy — in the servant’s quarters — is the oft-forgotten reality that history isn’t merely an account (or lies) of the victors but the indelible memories of the survivors and the sufferers.

Chadha uses the classic feudal model of upstairs-downstairs to recount a deeply disturbing human tragedy — wounds of which are yet to scab for many of its survivors. The film chronicles the last six months of the British Raj in India, using the Viceroy’s residence as a microcosm of all the political and social upheaval unfolding in that period. There’s a Hindu man, a Muslim woman, a Sikh rebel, a British civil servant holding on to the last straw of authority; the Downton-in-Delhi saga neatly picks representative characters like an inclusive census sheet. In doing so, the film feels like a condensed mini-series, where the melodrama downstairs doesn’t match up to the engaging rhythm of the colonial politics upstairs. Chadha lends a deeply emotional and lachrymose tone to the struggles of the commoners in the house — which evidently arises out of a personal space — but it fails to stimulate a connect or even evoke sympathy. It instead appears soapy. The romance between the characters essayed by Manish Dayal and Huma Qureshi lacks passion and conviction, while Om Puri’s character of Qureshi’s blind father is bereft of purpose.

The historical accuracy of Viceroy’s House maybe debatable, but it provides for a captivating and entertaining narrative, even for the uninitiated. However, the bowdlerization of the politics involving Mountbatten (Hugh Bonneville), Nehru (Tanveer Ghani) and Jinnah (Denzil Smith) makes the trio appear reductive, and their motivations — facile. The film sets out with an agenda to project Mountbatten as a pawn of a larger British conspiracy and a good man torn between bickering Indian politicians. Who better than the naturally innocent looking Bonneville to play the part? He borrows heavily from his Downton Abbey avatar of Lord Grantham including a scene where he is dressed by two Indian footmen. The notorious sexual peccadilloes of Lady Edwina Mountbatten (apart from a flirtatious glance at Nehru) is also strategically eliminated from the narrative.

Viceroy’s House doesn’t dwell too much on the freedom struggle either. Owing to its squeaky clean appearance, the run-up to the tragedy — which we all historically understand to be inevitable — fails to overwhelm, scare or infuriate. When the actual day does arrive in the film, the sudden flip-flop to gore, hunger, destruction and abject poverty seems oddly incongruent.

In an interview with The Hindu before the release, Chadha had said that the film is made from the perspective of a British Indian mother. The film’s violent vacillations and jumbled thoughts could safely be pinned to the filmmaker’s insistence on establishing emotions arising out of all these three viewpoints.