For the longest time I was under the assumption that after Lawrence of Arabia (1962), director David Lean had spent the rest of his career unsuccessfully trying to re-capture the glory of his four hour historical epic. Watching Doctor Zhivago (1965) did nothing to convince me otherwise. And yet, I am ready to stuff myself silly with crow after watching his last, and possibly greatest, film, an adaption of E. M. Forster's A Passage to India. I don't call A Passage to India a better film than Lawrence of Arabia lightly. I honestly believe that Lean tried something much more daring and difficult in this film. Lawrence of Arabia tried to tell a great historical epic. A Passage to India tried to tell a great mystery. Astoundingly, Lean managed to maintain the book's ambiguity about its central event, the possible attempted rape of a British woman by her Indian guide in the Marabar Caves, without ruining the intrigue. A lesser director would show what happened and subsequently pick a side during the ensuing trial. But Lean was better than that. He is more interested in how the characters react to whatever happened in the caves. A Passage to India is a film of mind-boggling scope that doesn't lose sight of its characters as so many other films of a similar nature do. This is a human drama with a massive backdrop that a regular filmmaker would have fumbled. Lawrence of Arabia is undoubtably a great film. But A Passage to India is his masterwork.
9/10
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