Charulata

As cinema appears to become ever more loud and brash, a work as delicate, subtle and understated as this may easily pass unnoticed, or mistaken as insipid. That is a great shame, since this is obviously a great masterpiece. Set in India in the last century, Charulata is trapped in a dull, stifling marriage. What starts off as innocent flirting with her brother-in-law soon sets off emotions that none of them, decent though they all are, can really control. There is no adultery as such - the betrayal is all in the mind - but the trust implicit in marriage is broken, and the future can only be faced with uncertainty.

This is a film of great grace and elegance, and also of considerable wit. But underneath the surface charm is a great seriousness. As always, Ray depicts the development of the characters with great insight and sensitivity, and coaxes fine performances from his cast. Western critics, in discussing this film, often draw parallels with the works of Chekhov or of Henry James, but Ray's inspiration was actually the great Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore, on whose short novel this film was based. As a piece of film-making, it is absolute perfection - a real gem.

Charulata is Satyajit Ray's masterpiece. No other movie is so brilliantly subtle, so timeless in quality. Indeed, Ray himself described Charulata as the only flawless movie he had directed.

Like the Apu trilogy, and many other Ray movies, Charulata deals with universal themes. Unlike the Apu trilogy, Charulata is set in an urbane, intellectual setting. This might be a turn off for some foreign viewers. When it was released in India in 1964, it was deemed controversial because of its depiction of an extramarital relationship. Yet no movie Ray made, not even the celebrated Apu trilogy, treats the themes of love, growth and loyalty with as much insight and sensitivity as Charulata.

Every scene in this movie is a gem, there are nuances in every movement, poetry in each look. Richly deserving multiple viewing, Charulata is the most perfect Ray movie.

Much as I love this film, I wish that any new viewer might first encounter it on a big screen, with its lovely, rhapsodic recreation of its late 19th Century setting is most apparent. The Chekhov parallels are overwhelming-- same period, same bittersweet attention to over-privileged lives, more than anything else the same rare affinity for female characters.

I remember reading through Satyajit Ray's list of things that people from outside India would fail to get in "Charulata" – of all his films (up to 1980, anyway) the one he thought was most "superficially" accessible to Westerners – and thinking to myself: "But I DID get all this... at least, more or less."

In Bengal society (Ray writes) a woman's brother-in-law holds a privileged position; the two are EXPECTED to form a special friendship, and she is allowed to be more intimate with him than with anyone else to whom she's not related by blood (apart, of course, from her husband). Ray is right. Most Westerners don't know this. I certainly didn't. But we're able to infer as much of it as matters from the film itself: we can tell that Amal and Charulata expect, before they fall properly in love, a fair degree of freedom in negotiating their friendship; that this is okay by Bhupati; that this isn't considered odd by any of the participants; that it (probably) WOULD be considered odd were Amal an outsider... and we can tell a good deal more besides; this is, as everyone acknowledges, a film of exceedingly rich characterisations. What we CAN'T tell from the film alone is the extent to which the expectations and roles of the three central characters are duplicated in other marriages across India. But this doesn't matter. This is a chamber drama, not an allegory.

Ray also lists some literary allusions which Westerners are almost certain to be blind to, but again, I think he's underestimated the extent to which he gets across, in the film alone, all he needs to get across. We can tell, from the way the characters react, what the allusions mean; just as an allusion to Achilles' heel, if properly used, will make sense to (and add depth for) an audience entirely unfamiliar with Greek legend. Even the film's makes sense to outsiders in a way Ray thinks it won't. It's a Scottish tune (I know this because I recognised it, but you can tell it's Scottish even if you don't) with Bengali lyrics; we can tell it's a Western song, from (more or less) the land which currently rules over India, which at least some Indians have adopted as their own, which is popular enough for Amal to expect others to be familiar with it, etc. (I have to admit, though, that something was being conveyed by the lyrics that wasn't being adequately conveyed by the subtitles.)

It's a tribute to Ray's skill that even he doesn't realise just how much context he's managed to import into "Charulata". Of course, he's right in that nobody will get everything; Ray himself admits to not understanding the meaning of his own (hopeful? cautious? distancing?) final freeze frame ("I only knew that it was the right way to end the film"), and, I need hardly add, I don't either.

Ray was wrong to think that the allusions fall flat on Western ears or that some of the necessary social context is impenetrable, but the film would still have something to offer even if he weren't: the characters would still be as alive and real, the respect with which they're treated would be just as apparent; the film would still, in short, be a beautiful one.

Satyajit Ray's Charulata (1964) is considered to be a masterpiece and monument of timeless art and is also accepted as one of the best ever adaptations of a literary piece. The film is an adaptation of a short story named Nashtaneer by Rabindranath Tagore. This review contains Ray's subtle use of metaphors while handling the plot which deserves appreciation along with its other technical perfections.

The metaphors used in this film are countable but very much catchy and pleasant if related properly with each other. Ray successfully employed the metaphors within the constraint of film techniques. The mentionable metaphors are Charu's opera-glass, caged birds, carpet-shoe and Sentinel newspaper etc. In the very poetic opening sequence of the film is not bereft of any intention by the director. The use of opera-glass vision or binocular-vision (which is masked-shot to be precise) is very grabbing. Charu sees the world through opera-glass. Even she sees her husband Bhupati with it once. The immediate and swift zoom-out after the gaze is praiseworthy. In the film, Charu sees the world through it but whoever she sees goes out of her limited vision. She cannot but forced to let them go out of her vision. By the end of the film, she once again takes refuge to her glasses. The focus of her glasses (a boat) moves on. The only person static in her opera-glass is Amal as seen in the garden sequence. But Amal sneaks off at last rendering Charu's opera-glass a constant metaphor of both escapism and a means of escape. Two times in the film, caged birds are seen within the frame of a shot's composition. That is a perfect metaphor for representing Charu and Amal to some extent as if they can fly but within a limited confinement where flying does not even mean anything fruitful. The carpet-shoe metaphor is a perfect example of Charu's growing weakness for Amal. Charu knitted the pair of shoe with meticulous attention for Bhupati. This was a sign of her loyalty to her husband. But she presents it to Amal and it was clear that she was presenting her affinity for Amal by doing this. When Amal leaves, she angrily collects the pair of shoe from Amal's room but there is no indication that she will give it to Bhupati either. The metaphoric indication is clear _ Charu can never present her love to anyone anymore. The Sentinel newspaper is last but not the least metaphor here. It shifts its representational position which makes it an interesting metaphor. At first it was a symbol of Bhupati's workaholic mind and was appreciable. Then it turns itself as an image of political consciousness of Bhupati and thus assumes a negative connotation to the viewer. It is because Bhupati's obsession with politics fruits a chasm in a social relationship between him and his wife Charu. Then the newspaper becomes a symbol of Bhupati's failure. At the last freeze shot, a copy of the newspaper is seen which connotes itself to be nothing more than a scrap and thus a metonymy of a broken house. Among other metaphors, betel and Bishwabondhu magazine are prominent ones.

It is literally very tough to find flaws with editing of such a meticulously knitted film. In fact, there is none to be mentioned. The transition between scenes is smoothed by very charming fade-ins and fade-outs. There are cuts but torrent of the plot remains uninterrupted. It must be mentioned that superimposition used in order to ensure the transition between scenes were very successful. The most interesting was the last three freezes. It is at once appreciable and bears evidence of cinematic craftsmanship of Satyajit Ray. He was accused by a critic that Charulata has been a bad adaptation. But within the technical sophistication of a film; the necessity of deducing, adding and altering is technically and literally undeniable. Thus the subtlety of editing makes Charulata one of the most entertaining and pioneering films in Bengali of all times. The editing aids to condense the story within an accepted time frame. In a nutshell, the crafty editing makes Charulata even critics' favourite as well.