The location is Calcutta, around 1880. Bhupati, who edits and publishes in his home a political newspaper called The Sentinel, is persuaded that his wife Charulata has special gifts as a writer. When his young cousin (the relationship is considered to be equivalent to Charu’s brother-in-law) Amal, comes to live with them, Bhupati asks him to encourage her cultural interests, but in such a way that she remains unaware of her husband’s intervention in setting up their encounter. An increasingly intimate relationship develops between Charulata and Amal: one based on complicity, friendship, writing, and eventually love. Meanwhile, the bookkeeper of The Sentinel, another family member, embezzles the funds supporting the paper and destroys Bhupati’s hopes for his enterprise. All he has left is the trust he has placed in Charulata and Amal, which has been compromised by their feelings for each other.
In this film, as well as in Devi (The Goddess, 1960) and Ghare Baire (The Home and the World, 1984), Ray explores the cultural emergence of the idea of the “modern woman” in the upper class of colonial India, showing with striking sensitivity the pressures this new ideal placed on individual women whose self-identities were also molded by traditional expectations. –Satyajit Ray Film and Study Center
India’s single most celebrated filmmaker, Satyajit Ray was born into a prominent Calcutta family on May 2, 1921. Ray’s grandfather, Upendrakishole Roychwdhury, was the creator of the popular children’s magazine Sandesh; his father, Sukhumar Ray (sometimes spelled Ra), was a noted poet and historian. After attending the Ballygunj government school, the younger Ray studied business science and physics at Calcutta’s Presidency College. From 1940 to 1942, he attended the University of Santinketan, a private establishment founded by an old family friend, Hindu poet Rabindranatah Tagore, the man largely credited with India’s 20th-century cultural renaissance. After graduation, Ray went to work as a commercial artist for the D. J. Keymer advertising agency in Calcutta. It was here that he was assigned to draw illustrations for Bhibuti Bashan Bannerjee’s classic autobiographical novel of Bengal life, Pather Panchali. Though he’d never had any formal cinematic training, he determined then and… read more
Unrelated game: take the opening shots of this movie, compare with the opening shots of Tree of Life: the camera movements are exactly the same, but the blocking is exactly reverse! Now take the opening shots of this movie, and compare with the opening shots of L'Eclisse. They mean the same thing, but are shot completely differently! -- PolarisDiB
I'm still processing this masterwork so forgive me if this sounds mundane. I will say this though, there's that cliche about how you should be able to watch a film with the sound turned off(or in the case of a foreign film without titles) and still be able to comprehend most of what is going on. That said I can think of few examples more relevant to that ideal than the sequence on the swing. More later. Masterpiece.
Ray's elegant and gently moving story of a neglected housewife in 19th Century India is considered to be one of his best films. Her husband is too busy with the publication of his newspaper to pay her the attention she needs so when a handsome young cousin comes to visit they while away their hours together in conversation and she chastely falls in love with him. Several lovely individual scenes, beautifully filmed..