Viceroy’s House (2017)

In Viceroy’s House, writer/director Gurinder Chadha continues her Indian-British-themed productions with this period drama about Lord Mountbatten’s (Hugh Bonneville) arrival in India in 1947, as the last Viceroy to the region. It is his job to oversees the end of British influence and government in India.

The visuals are beautiful, as expected from a big-budget period drama. The wardrobe transports you straight to that time and the dialogue is prim and proper. But there’s also a warm, welcoming styling to the screenplay that allows the actors to grab your attention and hold it, while still teaching you about history.

As ever with movies, it’s a bit of an uneven history lesson, says Susan Wloszczyna from rogerebert.com: “Chadha would seem to be uniquely qualified to depict this moment in India’s past. The Kenyan-born daughter of a Sikh father, she considers India to be her homeland though she grew up in London. Her own relatives were part of the 14 million who were displaced. But for whatever reason, Chadha chose not to rely on her family’s experiences except in the smallest of ways, without seizing opportunities to provide personal insight on such a large-scale event. Instead, she chose a more stilted route.”