Teen Kanya

Like most anthology films this one from Satyajit Ray, which has as its common theme womans' travails in early 20th century India and based on stories by Rabindranath Tagore, has entries of varying quality. The first, dealing with a stray waif who keeps body and soul together by acting as a servant to the postmaster of a poor village and becomes attached to him as a father figure only to be abandoned when the postmaster returns to Calcutta, is affecting mostly due to the wonderful performance given by the child actor; heart tugging without being cloying. Not easy to do, even with an accomplished adult actor, so credit Ray along with the kid. Problem with it is that it's not long enough (certainly not a flaw often seen in this director's work!). Just when you're starting to see a relationship build between the child and the adult the plug is pulled. Consequently, what should be a heart rending denouement is, at best, bittersweet.

Second entry about an upper middle class woman's marital problems is so dull I wish it were half the length of the first.

Third entry is the best, by far. A triangle between a too controlling mother, her spoiled son, and the "headstrong, crazy" girl (read a woman with a mind of her own) with whom the son is infatuated, the story is well told by Ray with a beguiling combination of comedy and tragedy. And the ending, where both the son and the girl learn to grow up, in their various ways, if they wish to salvage their marriage, is most satisfying.

First film: B Second Film: C Third Film: A

Ergo, let's give it a B.

When the writing is of Kaviguru and the depiction is of Ray, what can it be other than a true Masterpiece! Of the three segments, I like the last one the most. The horror of that segment can be felt if you are really immersed in the movie. If you are watching it just to watch, then you may not feel anything, but if you are really into the film, then you can feel every word.

Without any superior technology, the acting and the depiction of the actors and actresses, and the director, respectively, have made it very real. I am giving it a seven because of my own taste. This piece is from the olden days, and for that reason, the fluidity is missing. But, I have that much sense to call it a MASTERPIECE.

Originally, this movie comprised _three_ separate stories by the legendary Rabindranath Thakur (Tagore); hence the title "Teen Kanya" ("Three Daughters"). However, the subtitling could not be finished in time for a Tagore anniversary, so the middle story, a ghost story, is not included in the videocassette, retitled "Two Daughters." In the two remaining stories, we explore the lives of two girls living in a world not of their making, facing their fates with limited options. The first story, "The Postman," is about a lower-middle-class bourgeois city boy who goes deep into the Bengali countryside to take a job as a village postman. The "daughter" in this story is Ratna (nicknamed "Ratan"), his servant, a little slip of a girl. In the west, this girl, an orphan, not even at the age of adolescence, is a child. How can she cope? What can she look forward to? The second story, "Samapti," is about another girl in rural Bengal, this one a little older. She's what we would call a "tomboy." The life of an adult woman in this society -- a housewife -- wouldn't seem to be much in her taste. She is active, vivacious, lively, brazen, playful. She is known as "Pagli" ("crazy") by the disapproving villagers. But it is these very qualities that attract the attention of Amulya, a young college graduate who has returned home to his widowed mother to be nagged by her to settle down and take a wife -- a traditional, shy, modest, and, in Amulya's view, boring wife. Despite the serious subject of these two stories, they are actually quite funny. The second story is even hilarious, with a couple of near-slapstick sequences. (In the scene in which Amulya breaks the news to his mother as to which girl he really likes, pay close attention to what's happening in the background.)

Two daughters by Satyajit Ray was my first introduction to Indian cinema. Satyajit Ray has produced a gem of a movie that differs from almost any other Indian films I have seen. Two daughters actually consists of two separate stories based on stories written by Rabindranath Tagore.

The Postman is the better of the two stories. Not giving away the plot, this movie had one of the most heart-wrenching scenes in cinema. The simple, but powerful way Ray pulls his quiet films together at their end makes these quiet films very memorable. Sampati drags out somewhat longer, but has a powerful climax of its own. After years, these two movies have stuck in my memory. I would recommend them to anyone.

This film, called TEEN KANYA in Bengali and TWO DAUGHTERS in English, was made six years after Ray's first film, PATHER PANCHALI (1955), which was the first of the famous APU TRILOGY. Having finished that trilogy as well as another of his haunting masterpieces, THE MUSIC ROOM, Ray turned his attention to two wonderful short stories by Rabindranath Tagore, so that this film is therefore a diptych, composed of two separate films of those two stories. The first of them is entitled THE POSTMASTER, and most of it is filmed in and around a small hut inhabited by a young man who has just become a village postmaster. Along with the hut and the job, he has acquired a servant named Ratan who is a 10 year-old orphan girl who never knew her mother and father. The previous postmaster beat her and treated her badly, but the new one is very kind, and she becomes attached to him. This is the first time she has ever allowed herself to feel anything for anyone, in her harsh young life. The story is one of the saddest and most heart-breaking ever filmed. The intensity of the acting by the young girl, played by Chandana Banerjee, is one of the most powerful child screen performances in the history of world cinema. This young girl only made one other film, KAA, in 1966, and after that, nothing is recorded of her life or her fate. She was able to convey so much with her eyes without speaking, that it was like cinematic telepathy. The ending of this film is unforgettable, and will haunt any sensitive person always. The second film is not a sad story but an odd and amusing one. It concerns a girl in her late teens who is a wildly eccentric tomboy. She and her family live in a shack by the river bank, having lost their home and all their possessions in one of the many floods which continually afflict Bengal (the stories are set in Bengal). She likes to run wild and free, swing from the trees, play with the boys, run and hide in the forest, and always goes barefoot. She is brilliantly played by the young actress Aparna Sen, whose first adult part it was (she had appeared in one film previously as a child). She went on to become one of India's most famous serious film actresses, and has appeared in 62 films, including others by Satyajit Ray such as DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE FOREST (1970) and THE MIDDLEMAN (1976). She also appeared in James Ivory's THE GURU (1969) with Michael York and Rita Tushingham, as well as James Ivory's BOMBAY TALKIE (1970) with Felicity Kendal. In this film, Sen evokes the mystery and the animal energy of the wild young creature in an unforgettable portrayal of a girl in rebellion at becoming a woman and a wife and thus forfeiting her freedom. These days the film should be adopted by feminists as a manifesto statement. Satyajit Ray was notable for making many films sympathetic to women, girls, and children, and he had a rare understanding of the vagaries of feminine psychology. His films are often as much psychology lessons as they are high art. And he had the ability to get his actors and actresses to give of their best, and then more besides. Certainly, Ray's films are some of the most emotionally moving and psychologically profound works of cinema ever made. But in addition to that, they are technical masterpieces as well. For this film, Ray was director, producer, writer, and composer of the music. Ray was certainly one of the three great Bengali geniuses of the 20th century, another being Rabindranath Tagore himself, and the third being unquestionably Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, the scientist who collaborated with Albert Einstein, and after whom Bose-Einstein Condensates are named. (But if you have never heard of Bose-Einstein Condensates, you are forgiven, as they are highly technical, and even most physicists have never heard of them.)