Evelyn, played by Judy Danch, has just died, and after a lifetime of housewife, he finds himself derailed from society. Faced with an online world of elderly people at a loss, the widow's doubts about her abilities brought her to the brink of collapse. Evelyn had to sell her house and move to her son's house to pay off her debts, but she no longer wanted to give her life to someone else like she was dependent on her husband, and decided to go to India to seek change.
India and The United Kingdom are very different, on the one hand is the neat, clean, polite, distance of modern life, on the other side is chaotic traffic, the air curry smell, hair oil smell, fragrant floral smell and strong body odor mixed, high and low buildings colorful, enthusiastic worship activities in the city's main roads noisy parade. Like all people who travel from developed to underdeveloped areas, Evelyn, who has a story, is familiar with this place, misses it, he is not concerned about experiencing the exotic atmosphere, and he is eager to find his past.
One of the troubles of dealing with exotic travel films is the language problem, or completely disregarding the facts and unifying the language, such as the English-speaking Japanese geisha in "Memoirs of a Geisha", the same first-class language skills of the Qing Emperor and harem concubines in "The Last Emperor"; or arranging the characters as language-capable characters, such as the Japanese officers in "Merry Christmas on the Battlefield" who can basically speak English. But filming a 21st-century British trip to India doesn't have to fret between the two. After a long period of British colonial rule, the English language has taken root in India. Linguistically, India is very different from China. The colonial rule of the ruling state brought English to India, and colonial education also made English more and more popular.
The contrast between aristocratic consciousness and dalit identity here is undoubtedly the director's arrangement. The communication between the two women allows Muriel to put aside his prejudices, open up his closed consciousness, and also show his concern for the so-called untouchable identity. To some extent, this part of the plot is somewhat high-level, bringing people closer to each other, class to class, when in fact, the status and living conditions of Dalits in India are extremely bad, and the old British woman with aristocratic xenophobic consciousness may be more likely to stick to her stubborn attitude to the end.
It is not necessary to think about this film from the perspective of class, inequality, colonial history, etc., but these problems are clearly traced in the film. It is also in the clues of these questions that 7 retired elderly people leave the high-end developed Britain and flee with the collective escape of the imperial shadow, vivid and warm pulse.