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values, given that both films present Western utilitarian pragmatism - embodied by the
British expatriate community in Lean's film and Tunner in The Sheltering Sky - as unaffected
by such an encounter.
Therefore, the retro quality of the films' settings and mises-en-scene impacts on the
affective and cognitive engagement of viewers. Emotionally, it revitalizes the past fascination
that Western viewers experienced in discovering the East through a range of literary and
cultural media; cognitively, the films activate viewer recognition of the different character
traits of Westerners immersed in other cultures and of narrative schemes related to journeys
in unfamiliar locations. Additionally, the films use the viewer's renewed fascination in new
cultural encounters to invite socio-political reflection; in A Passage to India, these relate to
colonialism, whereas in The Sheltering Sky they concern the negative influence that the
Western cultural notion of time has had on human relations. By marginalizing mortality from
everyday life, Western culture has created a deceptive impression of there being endless time
to fulfil one's intimate desires with the effect that these can end up being deferred indefinitely
and never realized. This is a concept summarized and poetically conveyed by Bowles's final
monologue.
Conclusion
The Sheltering Sky fills viewers' senses with colours, light and boundless space, reducing the
logical flow of their thought processes as they follow the narrative's atypical temporal
schemata. Nevertheless, the two main emotions cued by the mise-en-scene - fascination and
melancholy - are the means with which Bertolucci stimulates reflection about human
relationships in contemporary Western society. In particular, the film questions Western
perceptions of time which trap individuals in a spiral of commitments that inhibits their
ability to question their life choices, an existence that leads to solitude and unhappiness. This
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