Review - The River

HE SAID:

Jean Renoir’s 1951 film The River is part India travelogue, part technicolor colonial masturbatory fantasy, and part coming-of-age tale. On the surface, it has the political sensitivity of, say, Gone With the Wind, and might have been a dramatization of the diary of Scarlet O’Hara’s younger, more feeling sister if such a character wandered off her antebellum plantation onto a similar set-up in 20th century India.

The story is told through the eyes of Harriet, the gangly, pubescent daughter of a British plantation manager. Her family lives in a colonial mansion, complete with its own Indian mammy and butler, and scenes of long, lolling, sun-drenched afternoons idled away on the veranda (the art of splendid repose must run in the family) flicker frequently. In contrast, Renoir films the Indian plantation workers in perpetual yet content states of frenzied motion, totin’ bails of jute to and fro. But don’t alert Noam Chomsky just yet. Either Renoir has blithely chronicled such doings unmindful of blatant injustice, he has decided to let the images speak for themselves, or he has adopted the point of view of Harriet, who refines everything into a lyrical idyll. You tell me.

In any event, it’s through the prism of overwrought adolescence that Harriett views the world. Thus, she thinks she can compete for the affections of a one-legged American war vet, Captain John.  He has come to take refuge from the pain and pity he experiences at home. Harriet’s rival for Captain John’s affections is Valerie, a fetching redhead several years older. While Harriet attempts to woo Captain John by reading him her exquisitely sensitive poetry, Valerie merely has to let her long red hair waft in the wind to captivate him completely. But Captain John is the perfect vehicle for romantic projection -- Valerie stumbles over her own immature ideas about romantic entanglement, and a third female, the half-Indian, half-British Melanie, works herself into such mooning despair over the (frankly) banal American, that she dares not give it voice throughout the entire film.

But while these young women lose themselves in real and imagined dalliances, it’s Harriet’s younger brother, Bogie, who shakes everyone awake.  While he and a little Indian pal frolick about exploring the mysteries of India, he becomes fixated on a local snake charmer. That this ends in tragedy partly because Harriet, in the throes of her romantic daydream, fails to recognize the imminent danger, may be the price Renoir extracts from the indolent Brits, who have time to recreate and navel-gaze on the wealth created by the back-breaking native labor. In fact, it’s tempting to view Bogie’s deadly entrancement with cobras as metaphor for the family’s, and perhaps all of Britain’s, ill-conceived and condescending primitivism. Bogie’s demise breaks the spell cast over the characters and the film. It’s the end of adolescence, and the end of this particular sepia-soaked dream of India -- "India,"  in quotes. There are moments of great beauty here. JB

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Linkateria:

• The River: The Criterion Collection (DVD Journal)
• The River (David Thompson, BFI)
• Jean Renoir (Strictly Film School)

Comments

[jen]

Yay -- glad you're back! It was so sad to see the empty space where your blog was in my feed reader. Looking forward to reading the reviews and commentary from you and M.