A Behind The Scenes Look At Viceroy’s House, plus Clips

Tomorrow (Friday 3rd March) Pathé will release Gurinder Chada‘s ambitious historical drama Viceroy’s House in the UK and Ireland. Today Pathé have supplied us with a wonderful insightful new featurette in which the movie’s director share her thoughts on a movie that has a deeply personal connection. Also, the main cast chats about the movie and its historical importance. It’s a gorgeous looking movie, one set in the backdrop of the End of an Empire. The Birth of Two Nations. A true story, one of love amongst the chaos, check it out…

We also have a few clips for the movie too, first up with the clock ticking until India wins its independence from British rule and Lord Mountbatten (Hugh Bonneville), General Hastings Ismay (Michael Gambon) and Cyril Radcliffe (Simon Callow) face the difficult task of deciding where India and Pakistan’s borders will lie.

The next clip you would think a simple dance would cause no friction, but this is when we meet our young lovers Jeet (Manish Dayal) and Aalia (Huma Qureshi). One of them is a Hindu, the other a Muslim,as  tensions are heightened…

In the final clip The Mountbatten’s have recently arrived in India and in one of Edwina’s daily walkabouts (Gillan Anderson) with her aides She wants to change a lot of things…

Viceroy’s House in Delhi was the home of the British rulers of India. After 300 years, that rule was coming to an end. For 6 months in 1947, Lord Mountbatten, great grandson of Queen Victoria, assumed the post of the last Viceroy, charged with handing India back to its people.

The film’s story unfolds within that great House. Upstairs lived Mountbatten together with his wife and daughter; downstairs lived their 500 Hindu, Muslim and Sikh servants. As the political elite – Nehru, Jinnah and Gandhi – converged on the House to wrangle over the birth of independent India, conflict erupted. A decision was taken to divide the country and create a new Muslim homeland: Pakistan. It was a decision whose consequences reverberate to this day.

The film examines these events through the prism of a marriage – that of Dickie and Edwina Mountbatten – and a romance – that between a young Hindu servant, Jeet, and his intended Muslim bride, Aalia. The young lovers find themselves caught up in the seismic end of Empire, in conflict with the Mountbattens and with their own communities, but never ever giving up hope.

VICEROY’S HOUSE is a film that is both epic and intimate, with an inspirational message that celebrates tolerance. Many of the events depicted are either unknown or forgotten, but all have strong contemporary relevance in terms of lessons to be learnt concerning the politics of division and fear, the origins of religious extremism, and our moral responsibility towards migrants fleeing violence for a better life.

You can read our review of Viceroy’s House review here, with the movie released tomorrow 3rd March.