Various passengers from various backgrounds are on a bus to Calcutta. Raja Chowdhury is asked to look after Meenakshi Iyer and her baby son. Other passengers include a bunch of loud young people, two Sikh men, an elderly Muslim couple, a couple making out, a woman and her mentally-handicap son, and some men playing cards. There is religious strife in the country. The bus encounters a closed road. The driver takes a detour and ends up at a roadblock with other vehicles. There has been attacks and a Hindu mob descends on the religiously mix group.It's a post-9/11 melodrama about race relations in India. It's a little heavy-handed and a bit too long. That does subtract from the intensity. The group on the bus is deliberately random and carefully selected. I do give everyone involved full marks for the sincere effort. The newly formed couple is pretty effective.

When Mr. and Mrs. iyer released in 2002 it somehow just failed to generate any interest in me. Thought of it as just one of those other Indian English films, made by some foolish director. Saw bits and pieces of it, and completely forgot about it.Until two years ago, when they showed it on some vague channel(which ceased to exist). I just had to watch it. I remember being glued to the television watching the movie late into the night, in spite of the annoying ads which appeared every five minutes.I would have seen the film at least another 3-4 times, and till date it remains one my favorite Indian films.Watching the movie times and over, I've always discovered something new in it. Like the second time I saw it, I was completely bowled over by Konkona Sensharma's stellar performance.Or certain little nuances in the film...Everything is so intricately woven into one another. Or even the saying by the poet, which appears in the beginning of the film, which I was quite ignorant about, till recent, thinking it was just pretentious,and wanted to sound profound.At heart, the film is just a love story.Two people on a bus journey, falling in love during times of violence.Every scene in the film is underlined with some form of religious-political element, which sometime seems a little over-done.Maybe, it was meant to be an undertone, but somehow just sticks out.For that matter, even some of the English dialogues, they just don't sound natural.Very theatrical.But otherwise, the film is brilliant.Rahul Bose gives a very restrained and understated performance as the liberal Muslim wildlife photographer.Some really good acting by the supporting cast as well, especially Bhisham Sahani and Surekha Sikri, as the old Muslim couple. Has so many layers to it, only seen or noticed after multiple viewings.Goutham Ghose captures the Himalayan foothills,with his beautiful photography. Zakhir Hussain's music just flows with the film.For the kind of issue it addresses, Mr. and Mrs. iyer will be relevant any given day.

This is a must see for all who crave for meaningful, deep yet subtle cinema, and it flows like a dream and goes past you leaving you with the slight tinge of pain at the end. The beautifully simple cinematography blends perfectly with the brilliant background score and the mood of the film.At a personal level, I rediscovered my inner yearnings and passions from the character of Rahul Bose, Mr. Raja Choudhury, whose eyes were telling from the beginning of the subtle, sweet relationship between him and "Mrs. Iyer" of the impending breakup. The poet residing in the heart of the wild life photographer comes out when he started talking about "their" honeymoon and love trips in Waynad, Chidambaram ... which had never taken place, or would never take place. Although Konkona played her role wonderfully and fully deserves the accolades she got, Rahul showed such understated restrain in his acting that one can easily identify oneself with him. I liked the movie for its romanticism and complex interplay of human emotions. It deserves a perfect 10.

This review is intended to be read After seeing the movie, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer or Swept Away, as it contains soem spoilers necessary for comparisons of both movies. Mr. and Mrs. Iyer is simply a great movie on many levels. However, when the movie ended, I immediately went to IMDb to see if others saw the great similarities between MR. and Mrs. Iyer and Lina Wertmuller's Italian classic "Swept Away... by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August (1974)". Am I the only one to see the strong similarities between the two movies? Incidentally, Madonna's Husband (Guy Ritchie) was so enamored with the original Swept Away that he redid the movie in 2002. But be sure and watch the original Italian film if you want to compare it to Mr. and Mrs. Iyer. It's also interesting that both women, Aparna Sen and Wertmuller, were in their 50's when they made these movies (they are much further apart in actual age however). (Spoiler) In both movies, the audience watches as fate brings two potential lovers together. But the lovers, without the series of fateful events, would not be allowed to be together in their native cultures under normal circumstance. In both movies, only the audience understands the special circumstances that allow them to be together. And thus the audience gives them permission to be lovers or in Iyers case almost lovers. The audience is soon jolted with a shock ending however after hoping for some miracle. Both movies end with the clear message that society's imprint is dominating and at least one of the lovers will reluctantly march in tune with their original lot in society. In particular the train scene in Iyer is almost identical to the dock scene in Swept Away. (There is a Hungarian film, Bizalom (Confidence) (1980) that also has the Swept Away theme to a lesser degree. Sadly, it currently is not available for home viewing. Fate is WWII in that movie.) I don't point this similarity out as anything the takes away from either movie. Instead, I think Iyer reveals the genius behind Wertmuller's device of using fate as well as the relationship between men and women to show case a given culture's intricacies. Despite the underlying affair theme, these are not intended to be love stories as such. In Swept Away the focus is on social and political "casts" and in Iyer its actual casts and subcultures. They are movies that reveal the cultures they examine by way of the relationship between men and women. In Swept Away there was an even stronger sub theme of what would happen if there was no culture at all. If Aparna Sen was aware of Wertmuller's Swept Away, then I think it was genius on her part to realize that complex Indian culture would work even better with Wertmuller's plot device and would kick it up a notch, as they say. I don't think it's an accident that the movie opens with her explaining how complex Indian culture is to outsiders. (I also note this is the first movie I've seen with a note to the readers in the subtitle's explaining certain cultural customs.)If you like Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, I strongly recommend you see the 1974 Swept Away and draw your own conclusions. The movies are certainly not identical in detail, only in overall plot structure, so you can experience the movies on their own.The possible homage aside, I loved the movie and think it should be re-released in full DVD format. By that I mean the DVD suffers from two common flaws with DVDs not produced with possible true widescreen viewing in mind. 1) They give you the worst of the best which is the widescreen format WITHIN a standard NTSC TV (4:3) format. That means the great cinematographic quality is even more compromised than if they just gave you standard TV format. You do however get to see the whole width of the original film 2) If you are going to do English subtitles for some of the DVD, do it for all the DVD even the English. Not only do you cover the hearing impaired that way but with heavy accents and names for things much of the English is not easy to understand. 3) The chapter and timing doesn't follow international standards but currently follows standards of India. It's often said a movie should transport you to another time and place. This movie did that. It's difficult to reveal all the intricacies of any culture in a standard movie time frame but this movie apparently comes close.Along that line, I also think an important supplement to the movie are the reviews posted here that explain the depictions of the culture found in Mr. and Mrs. Iyer as well as such things as the mother daughter relationship between Aparna Sen and the leading women.