I watched Jean Renoir's
The River earlier this week. This is the only film I have watched recently that I could not comment on after viewing it and needed a few days to absorb how it affected me. I cannot convey how this wonderful but devastating film had such an emotional impact on me without spoiling it for those who have not seen it. I will just say that for me the film's most beautiful and lasting lessons are especially poignant to those of us who have children regularly in our lives, whether our own, a relative, or through a relationship with someone else.
The River is a testament to family love and a reminder of what a great gift children are for us to cherish and protect. Never, not even for a moment, can we forget that family is the most important anchoring element around which our lives orbit. Renoir has created something extraordinary by reminding us of this in such a captivating and truly lovely cinema experience.
Based closely on the memoir-novel by Rumer Godden (who also wrote the book on which the film
Black Narcissus is based),
The River is a story of a group of Western expats living in India, and we see the nation through their eyes. Those eyes are respectful, loving, and joyous of India and its people. This is not a political screed against colonialism or capitalism, as it no doubt would have been in the hands of a director like Godard. Instead, we are reminded throughout that this is a Renoir film, flowing as calmly, relentlessly, and powerfully as the Ganges for which the film is named and around whose waters the circle of life plays out.
The River is a deceptively simple film. Like any great body of water, it exists from one season to the next, sustaining those who inhabit its shores, is occasionally turbulent, and implies in its long course through many lands an inexorable march toward a distant and unknown future.
The plot involves two upper middle class British families living next door to each other. One family is completely English with parents, six children all under the age of 18, and their Indian servants and nanny. The eldest daughter Harriet is our guide to the story, a budding young writer who acts as the narrator in what might be the best voiceover ever captured in a film. The other family is an English widower and his half-Indian daughter Melanie who has just returned home after graduating from a boarding school. Harriet's best friend is also integral to the plot, a slightly older redheaded girl from a rich expat family living further down the river.
Into the lives of these people arrives an American cousin, Captain John, who was wounded grievously in WWII and is coming to India on a spiritual journey to seek answers to questions in himself he is unable to find at home in the States. He is played wonderfully by non-professional actor Thomas Breen, who was in real life a WWII veteran who lost a leg in battle, just as the character he plays. When we witness Captain John's struggles in
The River with the fate life has dealt him, we are seeing the real struggles of Breen's life. Renoir translates this to the screen in a series of interactions between Captain John and Harriet, Melanie, and Harriet's friend. The girls all compete for his attention, but it is quiet and dignified Melanie, the half-Indian girl, who we learn is most similar to Captain John in that she too is uncertain of where she belongs in the world. She sees right to the heart of Captain John's dilemma and to his questions poses one of the most perceptively intelligent replies ever penned to a script: "But where will you find a nation of one-legged men?"
This is the film that has finally catapulted Renoir into my pantheon of top directors. I have seen
Swamp Water,
The Rules of the Game, and the brilliant
Grand Illusion, but none of these impacted me nearly as much as
The River.
Whatever you do, after watching
The River, do not turn it off without also viewing the Martin Scorsese supplement about the film and its impact on his own life. It is a very personal interview with Scorsese as he talks about his first viewing of the movie as a kid and how it astounded and devastated him in a similar way to how it affected me. Scorsese also gives the film its rightful due as a cinematic gem and a perspective on how it fits into Renoir's body of work. It was a low budget production, which turned out to be a great blessing because had it been given lavish funding, the actors hired would have been known brands lacking the ultimately realistic, grounded, and satisfying quality captured, for example, by the performance of Thomas Breen.
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