Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

MartinHafer When I first began watching this film, I thought it was a movie that romanticized adultery. After all, the first minutes of the film show a very romantic tryst between a Brit living in India (Linus Roache) and his maid (Nanditas Das). However, this is not where the film went and I was quite impressed overall. You see, it turns out that the love is very one-sided. The Brit is married to a sweet lady and you can't see any reason for the man having an affair other than he's a sleazy dog. And, in many ways, this character appears to be a metaphor for the British in India--as he uses this woman and feels a certain sense of superiority. Where all this goes is very gripping--and I was caught by surprise many times. The film is full of interesting characters (especially Rahul Bose, who plays a VERY devoted servant who evolves throughout the film), an excellent script that is intelligently written and assumes the audience isn't stupid and wonderful locales. My only reservation is a small one--and some of the ending is a bit anti-climactic and certainly won't sit well with all the viewers. Still, it's a very good film and one well worth your time.

Shashi Krishna IT WAS DURING MY SEARCH for other works by Nandita Das that I came across 'Before the rains'. Ordinarily I probably would have given it a go-by but considering it had Rahul Bose in it too and was directed by the talented Santosh Sivan, it seemed worth giving a chance. In the first few frames itself the movie had me wrapped. The breathtaking locales of an enchantingly wooded Kerala make for a perfect backdrop to this tale of epic proportions. When Sivan's roving eye breezes past serene looking tea plantations and gorgeous gorge's carved out of nature's immaculate knife, one can easily see why he is considered one of the finest cinematographers in the country. Add to this the mix of warm locals buzzing around making small talk in Malayalam while keeping the prim houses of the English sahibs clean and you have an interesting concoction of stories ready to spill over.'Before the rains' starts off by exposing us to the core plot right away. That of the illicit affair between British spice baron Henry Moores (Linus Roache) and his housekeeper Sajani (Nandita). They nuzzle into each other's arms under the very roof that feeds her while collecting fresh honey from friendly beehives in the woods. Their seemingly hush-hush cozy little venture, though, has a silent confidant – T.K. Neelan (Bose), a handyman who works with the Englishman. He shares Henry's vision of cutting through the mountains to make that much awaited road that will transform the tea plantation into a full blown spice manufacturing unit rich with cardamom and pepper. Of course, this has to happen before the monsoon rains so that the road can sustain it. TK does not completely condone what Henry and Sajani share but he understands what love is. Given his adherence of friendship and loyalty to Henry he doesn't find it relevant to keep this a secret from Sajani's husband Rajat and her brother Manas. People he grew up with playing in the very forest that Sajani now spends her awake time enjoying Henry's indulgent kisses and hugs.Rajat is a tough guy who has no patience for Sajani's lies and deceit. Despite the lack of any concrete evidence against her, he knows something is amiss and suspects TK of being the guilty one. With things looking like this in walks Henry's wife and son one day. Much to Sajani's disappointment and frustration, her way out of her abusive husband's life seems to be by bridging the cultural divide that separates her and Henry. Things don't necessarily pan out this way when Sajani is beaten senseless one night and is forced to escape from her husband's heavy handed clutches. She runs to Henry's house (where TK also lives in an outhouse) and confesses her need to never have to face her husband again. Henry panics. This is a situation that he had not expected given the highest level of secrecy (and possible bottom line triviality) he had given the case thus far. It is then, on being rejected from Henry at such an important juncture, that Sajani, using TK's gun, shoots herself dead right in front of their bewildered eyes.'Before the rains' picks up momentum after this incident. The question of what is the right thing to do and who, more importantly, will do this becomes the focus. Will TK be the scapegoat for a murder that was inspired by Henry's lack of character? Or will TK go out of his way to tell everyone that it was Henry who was the cause of Sajani's untimely demise? What will be his true calling at such an hour – his ethics or his loyalty? Will Henry own up to his mistake and risk his spice project, and needless to mention his family's respect, altogether? Will the gora sahib pull his strings to come off unscathed in a time when it is so easy to do so? These are questions that the movie addresses as the frames pass by.Sivan's understanding of local sensitivity in a place like Kerala (pre- Independence) is obvious in every frame. Right from the attire the people wear to the 'Bharat Chodo' slogans that ring out across the quiet town in tropical Kerala is straight out of history's dusty pages. His bold showcasing of the flawed English colonialism sits bare as the one tragic incident stands to threaten an entire community. The subtle yet prominent mention of the price passion has to pay despite the odds being against a culturally diverse couple is very well showcased.Performances belong to almost everyone in the movie. Right from Bose, who plays the silent yet defiant Malayali foreman of the English sahib to Das, who plays the victimized and misdirected mistress whose fate eventually does her in. Each character in the movie does justice to a plot that, despite its simplistic way of handling the most complicated of situations, exposes the shocking hues with which the Raj worked in colonial India. At a time when most of the movies coming out of India lack that much needed strand of human emotion, 'Before the rains' stands out like a breathe of fresh air that underlines only one basic human emotion – conscience.

HeadleyLamarr I had to hunt down where this film was playing - it was 70 miles away and I took a road trip to go catch it. The reviews have been so good, it is made by Sivan, has Nandita Das AND Rahul Bose so it seemed well worth the effort. Unfortunately I feel really let down by the film. It seems specifically made to cater to a Western audience and is less Indian than Darjeeling Limited! Sivan tells an engaging enough tale that the 90+ minutes do not hang heavy on your hands but the characters are not well etched at all. I went in expecting an Indian Ink (Stoppard) or a Passage to India (EM Forster), at the very least I was hoping for a Heat and Dust, but this is lower than that Ruth Praver Jhabvala fare.Nandita Das plays Sajani, a woman who works as maidservant to the Moores family headed by Linus Roache as Henry Moores. While the wife (Jennifer Ehle) and son are away, Henry gets into an adulterous love affair with Sajani. With the help of TK, a local village man who is English educated, Henry is trying to build a road to improve the spice trade. Sajani is married to a brutish fellow, he does find out and all hell breaks loose. There is the obligatory tragic ending but you watch it from the outside with clinical detachment. The white man is a spineless fellow, the white woman a large hearted up-standing woman (like the white women in Lagaan, RDB). Nandita Das has a meaningless role that she cannot sink her teeth into, Rahul Bose is equally wasted in the role of a man who is neither fish nor fowl, but caught between two cultures. So much could have been made of this character. Linus Roach plays the gutless white man exceedingly well, you hate him and yet you also know where he is coming from. Jennifer Ehle is wonderful in a small role as the woman full of empathy.What Sivan does best is showcase the canvas, the photography is absolutely stunning. The locales are full of magic and every shimmering dew drop, the frog jumping into the pond, the mist rising from the tree tops, is all magically captured by his lens. Where he loses out is in etching the characters better, and having more to the story itself. This is a thin tale. He also fails at extracting the best from his stellar cast. Western audiences will love this tale of "forbidden love" - parts of it more graphically shown than we are used to seeing, the spineless British man, the Indian man learning the gentleman's game from the gentleman Henry, and in fact out-gentlemaning Henry in the end. I am sure they will also find most interesting some of the bizarre and arcane rituals that the "tribals' were practicing! I am disappointed because this one could have been so much more.

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.