Ray of Hope Saytyajit Ray’s "Charulatha"

The backbone of the story is the suppressed love and creativity of Charulatha, a housewife, how it evolves alongside her idealist husband’s single-minded search for truth and finally, the untimely expression of her inner desires. The film is based on the novel ‘Nastanirh’ (‘Broken Nest’), by Nobel Prize laureate Rabindranath Tagore and true to the title, of the novel on which it is based, the storyline is given a jolt by the arrival of dashing younger brother of the husband, fresh out of art school. In the novel, Tagore takes a brief yet intimate look into the workings of the mind of a woman, the trappings of genius in a paternalistic world.

The winner of the honorary Oscar in 1992 for Lifetime Achievement not only directed and wrote the screenplay, but also composed the music. Almost resembling a musical at times, this Ray succeeds in bringing together an array of poetry, folk songs and Western classical music, along with a mesmerizing combination of sounds of late 19th century Calcutta. As the legendary Japanese director and close friend of Ray, Akira Kurosawa once said: "Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon."

The central character Charulatha is a delight to watch. Madhabi Mukherjee, one of those timelessly beautiful Bengali actresses, is a director’s dream and plays the role of bored, intelligent housewife to the point of perfection. One can almost imagine Ray prompting Madhabi like a puppet on strings. Pause the movie anywhere, her action and facial expression would a cinematic moment. The film was shot entirely in a studio and perfection of Ray is visible in every nook and corner of the film - the placement of a bird cage outside a window, the wallpaper in the living room, the way Charulatha moves through the house - every second is moment of poetry.

Despite being an ardent fan of the Apu Trilogy, I admit I was a bit skeptic when asked to review a black and white movie of Ray’s. After all, a film festival is an occasion to watch the very latest in serious cinema. But the opening scene itself hooked me, an 8 minute sequence without dialogue where Charulatha waltzes through what appears to be a morning routine. Moreover, Ray being something of a perfectionist, the composition and texture of the rooms were brilliant. I felt that the lavish use of 3D, visual effects and green room technology today as an excess, a distraction from the simplicity of good story-telling. How many dialogues can you remember from the latest Harry Potter of Transformers series?

A scene from the movie that still resonates in my mind is a scene in the overgrown garden outside, where Amal, the younger brother is lying down, writing a poem while Charulatha sits on a swing, eyeing him as if in a trance. Amal says, “The sun, the moon, the river, the waves in an ocean. Everything in nature moves forwards. Except the mind, the mind of men looks back.”

It is said that greatness is a quality decided by time. Ultimately, the timelessness is the success of Charulatha. The central themes of the film - the struggle between art and everyday life, work-life and family, blindness of love and morality: these are values that will exist in society forever. Simply put, the cinematic poetry of Ray has to be worth a couple of hours in the evening and a few 10 AED notes. Shouldn’t it?

by Ziad Abdul Samad