- and the scenery is stunning, but otherwise, such a film as this makes me understand why Salinger wanted "Catcher in the Rye" to remain unfilmed. Ravi Sheth is passable as Kim when he can refrain from dismal attempts at being "cute" (I know: the director is probably to blame),and at times, he's downright good. Rhys-Davies and Brown are excellent in a way that honors the novel, but Peter O'Toole is an abomination. Let alone that his bald pate is the worst make-up job I have seen outside a circus, but the Lama is supposed to be wise in a childish way and O'Toole misses the mark by a light year, stumbling away in a drunken stupor and reading his lines like a BBC news reader from the 30s. I trust that by now O'Toole has been reborn as a cobra due to his criminal treatment of Kipling's Old Lama. In this case, I'll not blame the director. With a track record like his own, Peter O'Toole should be able to make something better out of even the poorest direction. To think that HE played Lawrence of Arabia! How are the mighty fallen! However, I did not mind in the least the added love story of the young British trooper and his Indian wife - in fact, it showed that the men behind the film knew their Kipling. I take it the interracial tragedy is collected from stories such as "Lispeth", "Beyond the Pale" and "Without Benefit of Clergy".
But why, oh why didn't David Lean think of filming "Kim" when he actually improved on Forster's chatty "Passage to India", a far lesser literary work?
