This adaptation of E.M. Forster's mysterious tale of British racism in colonial India turned out to be master director David Lean's final film. Subtle and grand at the same time; Lean's adaptation is faithful to the book; rendering its blend of the mystical and the all-too human with exquisite precision. Judy Davis plays a young British woman traveling in India with her fianc?'s mother. While visiting a tourist attraction; she has a frightening moment in a cave--one that she eventually spins from an instant of mental meltdown into a tale of a physical attack that ruins several lives. Lean captures Forster's sense of awe at the kind of ageless wisdom and inexplicable phenomena to be encountered in India; as well as the British tendency to dismiss it all as savage; rather than simply different. --Marshall Fine