A Passage to India

David Lean (last film)
Returning to this film with a certain bias, it was enjoyable in its reconstruction of the colonial period, its unflattering caricaturization of Indians notwithstanding. Visually lavish and exhilarating, as might be expected of Lean. The Britishers roles, specially the two female leading roles, are well done, though Alec Guinness is at his least impressive as an Indian professor. Of the Indians, only Roshan Seth, as the defense lawyer, is dignified.
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Saving Private Ryan

What remains impressed is the cinematography and the sound effects, which draw you into the sensuals aspects of the war experience, as well as the fear, loneliness, homesickness, grief, bonds of brotherhood, the inurement of feeling as men fall like skittles. A profoundly aesthetic film, like a surrealistic painting set in motion. Spielberg is heir to Lean, who is said to have inspired him into film making.

To quote from Janet Jaslin:
"The film's immense dignity is its signal characteristic, and some of it is achieved though deliberate elision..... Imagine Hieronymus Bosch with a Steadicam (instead of the immensely talented Janusz Kaminski) and you have some idea of the tableaux to emerge here, as the film explodes into panoramic yet intimate visions of bloodshed..... the tranquil pause in a bombed-out French village, to the strains of Edith Piaf...."

King Lear

RSC, 2009, Trevor Nunn, Ian McKellan
This is a nuanced Lear, with no cinematic frills, and it was a delight to encounter many lines and moments as if for the first time.
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David Copperfield

1999, BBC, 3 hours
 A competent presentation of Dickens semi autobiographical novel. The period and the landscape is nicely recreated and we have the crowd of comical, sentimental but all too human portraitures. Some parts are moving, some drag on, others suffer from over compression.

Ballad of Narayama

1983, 130m, Palme d'Or

This is a much watered down version of the austere 1958 drama film of the same name. Instead of the stage props which were the background of the earlier film, we have eye catching photography of picture post card mountains and verdant nature. The elemental drama reduces to an anthropological study of a primitive people and their predominantly revolting ways. Unimpressive.