6.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
Two women, related but separated by one generation and 60 years, have parallel experiences in the evocative and mystical environment of India. One is Ann, who travels to India to research the life of her grandmother's sister after discovering love letters connecting her to an Indian nobleman.
Starring: Christopher Cazenove, Greta Scacchi, Julian Glover, Susan Fleetwood, Patrick GodfreyRomance | 100% |
Drama | 59% |
Period | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.66:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 5.1
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (2 BDs)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
Have you ever walked through a historic site, one that is hundreds or perhaps even thousands of years old, and wondered if some iconic figure associated with the place had stood where you were standing, or maybe even touched a wall or facade that you placed your hands on? There’s a sense of history like that running through Heat and Dust, one of the arguably lesser known or perhaps more accurately lesser remembered Merchant Ivory films, at least on this side of the pond, despite the fact that the film was a substantial hit in the UK and across Europe at the time of its release. The "kinship" of one place uniting two disparate characters is perhaps properly more familial in Heat and Dust than the connection between a “mere” tourist and some iconic locale which may have once "housed" a famous person. Heat and Dust regularly segues between two timeframes, with only shared locations providing a sense of stasis, and in fact several of those segues are almost “magical” as one set of characters from the twenties is replaced by another, linked, set in the eighties (or vice versa). The main thrust of this bifurcated story deals with the investigative pursuits of Anne (Julie Christie), a modern day (meaning circa 1980s) woman looking into the life of her long ago great aunt Olivia (Greta Scacchi). At least some of Olivia’s adventures are shrouded in mystery, something that leads Anne to the exotic climes of India, where her great aunt had also lived in the 1920s. Heat and Dust is based on a novel by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, long celebrated for having provided the screenplays for many legendary Merchant Ivory films (including A Room with a View and Howards End, taking home Academy Awards for both), but here adapting her own work for the screen. This is a typically literate effort from Jhabvala, one that at least dances around some of the same class and culture aspects that informed A Passage to India, a film that kind of feels like a Merchant Ivory production even though it isn't, perhaps due to having been based on a source novel by E.M. Forster.
Heat and Dust is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cohen Film Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.66:1. Cohen touts a new 4K restoration with this release but doesn't provide any further information in any documentation I received. The results here are nicely organic looking, but as can be seen in many of the screenshots accompanying this review, a lot of Walter Lassally's cinematography is intentionally soft and dewy looking, meaning fine detail levels can vary even in relatively bright lighting conditions. The grain field is fairly pronounced throughout the presentation (perhaps surprisingly so), but resolves naturally with no real compression problems. While the palette generally looks warm and inviting, I personally found it just a tad on the brown side and even slightly desaturated looking at times, especially in some of the 1920s material.
Heat and Dust features a nicely nuanced DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix. There's enough pomp and circumstance in several key scenes in the 1920s era especially that help to provide good immersive opportunities, but even some of the more "travelogue" aspects of the 1980s material has excellent placement of ambient environmental effects. A typically evocative score by Richard Robbins and Zakir Hussain also resonates warmly in the surround channels. Dialogue is presented cleanly and clearly on this problem free track.
Disc One
I'm not sure if there's a real narrative "target" in Heat and Dust, and as such the film tends to wander a bit, though the changing timeframes continually offer intriguing refractions that tend to present new understandings as the eras are compared and contrasted. Performances are uniformly excellent, and the film has the same burnished production design excellence that has typified many other Merchant Ivory productions. Cohen has assembled an attractive package here with strong technical merits and excellent supplementary material. Highly recommended.
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