Synopsis
In 1948, a new British governor takes over a Far Eastern colony after his predecessor is murdered by terrorists.
East of Elephant Rock
Genre
Releases by Date
Theatrical
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UK12
Releases by Country
UK
22 Oct 1977
- Theatrical12
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I’ve seen a few films like this here and there from the late 70s and 80s which might be termed Imperial revisionism - there are even a few earlier examples, like Guns at Batasi. They’re films set in the late Enoire or its immediate aftermath that suggest that perhaps the prevailing narrative of a beneficent empire extolling human kindness might in fact be horseshit.
Here John Hurt - wonderful as ever - plays a charismatic colonial officer in a thinly disguised Malaya who is attempting to mitigate the brutality of the overtly racist planter elite, but falls for the charms of an enigmatic planter’s wife which leads to enmity and murder.
The romance and the final act are very rushed, and Hurt aside the performances aren’t really strong enough, but I did find intriguing insight both into a lost colonial world and national reflections on it some twenty years after it disappeared.
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Does a good job of capturing Empirical life but it 'aint no Death on the Nile. Hurt stands out from a fairly solid cast but unfortunately the story is wafer-thin and it just peters out oddly at the end.