Hatred Cannot Keep These Lovers Apart
By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/25/movies/25IYER.html?ex=1054267200&en=86fa2dfc31693b69&ei=5070
plea for an end to sectarian violence comes wrapped in adventure and romance in the Indian film “Mr. and Mrs. Iyer.”
Written and directed by Aparna Sen, it focuses on communal bloodshed between India’s Hindus and Muslims to appeal as well for an end to conflict between Palestinian and Israeli and between Protestant and Roman Catholic in Northern Ireland.
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The well-acted romance, as the two principal characters are thrown together by unanticipated events, is hard to resist, even though the answer to the crucial question it raises is all too conveniently deferred time and again.
In its preachments, “Mr. and Mrs. Iyer,” which opens today in New York and the San Francisco area, is not a subtle film; and, most curiously — to put it mildly — for a sermon on tolerance, it resorts to history’s eternal scapegoat, a Jew, when it seeks a character willing to betray another to save his own skin.
That brief episode comes at a pivotal point in the bus journey that begins the film. The varied passengers — boisterous teenagers, an old Muslim couple, a grouchy woman, a retarded boy and his mother, some card-playing men — include a worldly, handsome photojournalist who specializes in wildlife and a lovely mother traveling with her year-old boy. Both are bound, eventually by rail, for Calcutta.
Introduced by mutual friends just before the start of the trip along hairpin turns from remote and beautiful hill country, they are Raja Chowdhary (Rahul Bose), the photographer, and Meenakshi Iyer (Konkona Sensharma), with her child, Santanam. Raja has agreed to look after Meena. Thanks to the restive baby, they eventually sit together, and the journey proceeds in relative calm.
Suddenly the bus encounters a roadblock, and when the rumors stop flying, it becomes clear that Hindu mobs are rampaging against Muslims after the burning of a Hindu village. Just before bloodthirsty extremists board the bus and haul off the old man to die, Raja tells the high-born Brahmin Meena that he is a Muslim. “Don’t touch me” is her shocked reply.
But as he rises to confront the invaders, Meena pulls him back down in his seat and passes them off to the killers as the Hindu couple Mr. and Mrs. Iyer.
As Meena gradually overcomes her prejudice, she and Raja fall in love while the perilous adventure puts them among police, among mobs and in an isolated and dilapidated resort. The unanswered question grows louder: Is there a real Mr. Iyer?
Directed by Aparna Sen
In English, with subtitled Tamil and Bengali
Not rated, 120 minutes
http://www.nypost.com/movies/56943.htm
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/story/78157p-72062c.html