BEFORE THE RAINS (India / USA, 98 minutes – directed by SANTOSH SIVAN)

Directed by Santosh Sivan (who was also the director of photography, his main film role before this directing debut), with a screen play by Cathy Rabin,  BEFORE THE RAINS is a story of fate and freedom, individual action and social accountability, and, most assuredly, culture and colonialism -- all woven together with deep, perilous, karmic threads. 

Every frame is beautifully composed and each scene seems perfectly executed (clearly what happens when a skilled cinematographer moves up to director). Water-infused images abound here (curiously though, little wildlife, save for insects and one elephant) as the tragedy unfolds: while the indigenous people of a growing, colonial Indian village begin to protest their British overlords, an English agricultural entrepreneur engages in a dangerous love affair with his beautiful, Indian housekeeper. His native “partner” and foreman ‘TK’—a progressive yet torn member of the plantation’s adjacent tribal village-- is aware of the dishonorable affair but maintains his silence.  

One day, in a buoyant mood, the Englishman (“Henry Moores” played with adroit, conflicted shallowness by Linus Roache) gives TK (played by Rahul Bose with just enough restraint to avoid caricature) a revolver, which TK is honored and impressed by, but which sets into motion the karmic inevitabilities that will be their downfalls. No one escapes the law of karma here. Though there are no “plot twists”, and one could say that all consequent events were predictable, it is precisely this obscuring of karmic import beneath the seemingly mundane that, upon unfolding on screen, causes the audience to react with audible shock and sadness. We know, unconsciously (and historically) that things cannot work out—not for the beautiful Sajani (played with perfect, natural ease by Nandita Das), not for TK, nor even the Englishman (whose wife returns, then leaves, and we sense, for good)…but we are too easily entranced by the telling of this period tragedy, not much different from the two friends—Moores and TK--who embark on their spice growing “revolution” with blissful, self-imposed ignorance to the growing, political revolution around them. When the spell is broken, when friendship and free-will, tribal culture and karmic law collide, the two friends, like the country itself, are forever altered.

Several times in the film we har someone say “I have/had no choice.” And yet, there is a choice at every turn (certainly for the two lovers at the very start, knowing the great risks), and these choices, of course, create the karmic threads of this affecting story. In the end, it is TK (the native-caught between two worlds) who breaks the tribal chain of fate (partly) and exercises true moral choice, and so there is perhaps a subtle assertion here of moral superiority.

The script is remarkable in that, while many independent art films rely on a central, visual metaphor to enrich and enhance the story, Cathy Rabin’s screenplay manages to utilize three or four visual metaphors recurrently. The acting is fine—an instructional in restraint--achieving just enough emotional pitch to make the scenes work, while successfully skirting the fine line between tragic acting and over-wrought dramaturgy. While not flawless, BEFORE THE RAINS is a nearly perfect story. The historically grounded script still manages to convey a sense of universality and timelessness.

- M. Ricciardi