Passage

A PASSAGE TO INDIA (1984)

A Passage to India Director: David Lean

Música: Maurice Jarre

Young British Adela Quested travels to colonized India accompanied by Mrs. Moore, her future mother-in-law, to visit her fiance, Ronny, who is a judge. There they establish friendship with Aziz, an Indian doctor, who invites them to visit the famous Marabar caves. But Adela undergoes on a traumatic experience and accuses Aziz of trying to rape her, which causes a serious conflict in the whole country.

By Conrado Xalabarder

Lean told me he didn't want my music to come from my stomach or my heart, as in the previous films. He was quite explicit: his hands went to his genitals and said: write your music thinking only on this

Maurice Jarre

1.- Musical Structure

The A Passage to India score is structured on the basis of next thematic hyerarchy:

Principal Theme : in the soundtrack, A Passage to India.

Judy Davis portrays the unstable Adela Quested Solemn and ceremonious theme in which the sounds of a synthetiser with certain mysterious tone lay the way to a powerful symphonic melody, very retentive, with outstanding presence of winds, percussions and harps. It is a music with a pompous, very emphatic appearance, that it comes to partly emulate the fascination by an exotic place - India -, but specially the power and rituality of the colonizers. As it will be seen in the film, the vision of India that have some of the English characters is simple and superficial, even disdainful, and this theme, so clearly British, serves as a representation of their power and dominion: the English occupy India and English music is also going to be present in the country. But it is also a main theme that is quite optimistic, with epic sense, which gives enormous impetus at the beginning of the film. At this point, the main theme is generic, without a concrete referring. More ahead it will be referenced to the Adela Quested character, like a expression of her madness.

Central Theme: in the soundtrack, Kashmir

Grandiloquent and exuberant theme, that has nothing to do with Principal Theme and that appears when this has already complimented and finalized its presence in the dramatic development of the film, in the scene in which Fielding and his wife stop to contemplate the Himalaya's mountains. It's a symphonic music with precise support of ethnic instruments, that emphasizes the beauty of the landscapes and grants a liberty sense.

Secondary Themes :

In the movie different secondary themes are applied, without a greater dramatical or argumental importance. They are diegetical musics of bands, dances or representations, that the characters listen. In the soundtrack edition only one track is included (Bombay March), military band music with which the two ladies are received with military honorses when arriving to India.

2.- Application of the Principal Theme

Alec Guinness and David Lean, on the set The main importance of the Principal Theme in the movie is shaped in the change that takes place when it happens to have a general meaning, as Initial Theme, and then begins to be the eloquent expression of Adela's mental and emotional turbulences, in such a way that it is a music that ends by entering in the character, in her instability, and so it does it more expressive. That implies that no other relevant music may interfere in this specification process and for that reason Jarre wrote a brief score.

At the initial credits, then, it sounds the Initial Theme, that will become the Principal, and it is generical. It will reappear 45 minutes later, when Adela take a ride on bicycle and finds an abandoned temple with statues in erotic positions. This scene is very important because it supposes argumentally and musically a point of not return. At that moment, Adela will begin to experience turbulent sensations that will undergo into a national tragedy: because of her traumas, India will rise on. The bicycle stroll, then, serves to reintroduce the theme, on a more quiet form at first and more sinister when she astonished contemplates the statues, where the theme is slowly executed, with the presence of feminine voices that retake a fascination look that subtly changes by a some sensual tone, between lewd and erotic, that experiences a careful crescendo as a travelling shows the face of Adela. This way, the theme is applied on a direct way into the figure of Adela and loses its generic characteristic. From now on, the reappearances of the theme- always in fragment forms- will refer directly to her mental state.

It happens this way few sequences after, when Adela cannot sleep and the theme returns to be repercuted in form of a fragment in which feminine voices are applied to affect the impact that has had on Adela her experience in the temple and her vision of the statues. It explicitly indicates that in her mind are excitation and instability. It takes place, then, a logical extension of the Principal Theme, displayed in the credits and a direct entailment between the scene of the temple and this new one.

It could be a surprise that in the sequences of the journey in the train and the ascent to the foot of the mountain, where there are landscapes of spectacular beauty, it does not sound any music, being this kind of moments propitious for a musical support. In the case of A Passage to India this is justified by the fact that the music is so oriented to reflect Adela's psychological evolution that any other -not including, of course, the diegetical music- would distract the attention of the spectator and would diminish the effectiveness of those annotations that have been constructed from the Principal Theme. Proof of it is that at the moment in which Adela and Aziz undertake the final section to arrive at the caves, the Principal Theme is reapplied, in low sonorous registry, marking the existing relation between the Adela's emotional confusion with the arrival to the place where the drama it is going to take place. Therefore, the music is leading both Adela and the spectator to the point where the drama will begin. If any other music should have been inserted previously, the dispersity had altered the global perception of the film.

It will be used again, by the last time through the plot, when Adela is called to declare in judgment: the insertion of a new fragment repercuted from the Principal Theme, in this case briefly and concise, clearly monstrates the mental disorder of the young lady and her fear to face a truth that immediately will be revealed: that all what happened had been an invention produced by her mental chaos.

When drama is solved there remains space, at last, for another music, the Central Theme, that now can stand out because it does not interfere with the Principal Theme evolution, that anyway closes the movie in the final credits in form of Final Theme, an optimistic and slight variation, conclusive and coherent with all that has been sounding through the film. This closing is not incoherent because the movie has already finished and, as well as giving a balanced and solid tone to the whole, serves as an elegant farewell. Therefore the evolution of the Principal Theme has been this one:

Initial Theme - Ride in bicycle (45 ') - Adela at night (53 ') - Raising the Caves (78 ') - Judgment (121 ') - Final Theme (154 '), where this last one does not break the evolution of the previous ones because film has already finished and because the last point of the repercussion of the Principal Theme occurs in the scene of the Judgment, where the drama is solved.

Themes on the soundtrack

Banda sonora de A Passage to India 1. A Passage to India (01:52) 2. The Marabar Caves (03:06) 3. Bombay March (02:34) 4. The Temple (05:19) 5. Frangipani (03:00) 6. Chandrapore (04:46) 7. Adela (04:25) 8. Expectations (03:07) 9. Bicycle Ride (03:27) 10. Climbing to the Caves (03:59) 11. Kashmir (02:19) 12. Back top England (02:30)