Oregon Movies, A to Z

Strange but true: both James Ivory and Chris Eyre grew up in Klamath Falls, one of Oregon’s sunniest and driest towns. Only James Ivory commemorated the experience by making a film titled Heat and Dust.

Heat and Dust stars Julie Christie as the Englishwoman who comes to India to get to the bottom of a family scandal involving her great aunt. Shashi Kapoor, Jennifer Kendal and Madhur Jaffrey return as Merchant Ivory regulars.

From the Merchant Ivory commentary included with the DVD:

Heat and Dust was adapted for the screen by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala from her Booker Prize-winning novel, and tells two stories in parallel through the use of splicing and juxtaposing of scenes. Flashbacks, and flash-forwards, which connect the Indian past (in the romantic 19203) and present (the 1970s). In the first story, Olivia (Greta Scacchi), a junior administrator’s wife, has an affair with a local Nawab (Shashi Kapoor) that shocks the British community, and at the end she goes to live alone in a mountain retreat. The second involves her great niece Anne (Julie Christie), who comes to India to research Olivia’s life and on a different level repeats her experience, becoming pregnant by her Indian lover Inder Lal (Zakir Hussain) and traveling finally to the retreat in the mountains where Olivia had ended her days and where she herself hopes to bear a child.

I hereby claim Heat and Dust as an Oregon film, as I will all of James Ivory’s films, whether they star Julie Christie or not.