Viceroy's House (2017)

Set in 1947 India, the British are leaving after 300 years of colonial rule. Lord Mountbatten (Hugh Bonneville), along with his wife (Gillian Anderson) and daughter (Lily Travers), arrives as the last Viceroy of India to oversee a peaceful transition of power. But civil unrest between Hindus and Muslims are tearing the nation apart as Muslims push for the partition of India and the creation of a Muslim state, Pakistan. Based on two non fiction books, FREEDOM AT MIDNIGHT by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre and THE SHADOW OF THE GREAT GAME by Narendra Singh Sarila and directed by Gurinder Chadha (BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM). It's a formidable challenge to cram a tumultuous historic period in a two hour film with any detailed accuracy and the film adds a fictional romance between a Hindu man (Manish Dayal) and a Muslim woman (Huma Qureshi) that takes up a good portion of the film's running time. That romance is the least satisfying part of the movie. The film does convey the clamorous atmosphere of fear and hope as a country is divided in two and literally millions of people displaced from their homes as a civil war between the two factions (Muslim and Hindu) threatens to derail the transition from British rule. Melodrama often takes center stage (that's not a putdown) but Chadha always keeps the focus where it should be. Still, nothing conveys the tragedy of the period more than the newsreel footage documenting the deaths, fighting and displacement. Those are real people, not actors. The film has a sumptuous look courtesy of Ben Smithard's (MY WEEK WITH MARILYN) location shooting. With Michael Gambon, Simon Callow, Om Puri, Neeraj Kabi as Gandhi, Tanveer Ghani as Nehru and Denzil Smith as Muhammad Jinnah.