Jalsaghar

WARNING -- PLOT DISCUSSED -- The jalsaghar is a great music hall in the mansion of the main character, a scion of a great landowning family. It's almost all he has left of the Ray family's legacy. Over the years his land has been slowly eaten away by one of the great rivers of Bengal. But he still has the trappings of aristocracy -- his retainers address him as "Hujur" ("my lord"); even his wealthy neighbour, Ganguli, addresses him as "Thakurda" ("(paternal) grandfather"). He lives only for his jalsaghar, where he can recreate his family's past glory and where he can still win a game of one-upmanship against Ganguli. Meanwhile, Ganguli is up-and-coming. He's a businessman, the new aristocrat, land-poor but cash-rich. He gets electric lights for his house; he gets a motor car, the first in the region. Satyajit Ray, the legendary director, masterfully contrasts the hollowness of the old aristocrat with the shallowness of the new aristocrat. How is privilege earned? Who is due respect? What is worthy of pride? What will pride get you? These are the questions that are explored with subtlety. The focus of the film is the performance of Chhabi Biswas, a legend of the Calcutta stage. (An interesting aside -- "chhabi" is Bengali for "picture" and "biswas" means "belief.") He fit the mold of a classic actor -- temperamental, undependable, a raging alcoholic, a master. Almost every scene is wholly dependent on him, as he preens and boasts and rages and pines away for lost glory. When you read that Biswas was in real life completely tone-deaf, his creation of a music-lover is an astonishing accomplishment, both by him and by Satyajit Ray.

At the time I post this, only 123 people have cast a vote of any kind for The Music Room. What a shame.

Satyajit Ray is one of the greatest directors of all-time and The Music Room is his masterpiece. Correction: The Music Room is a masterpiece of world cinema.

How to describe this movie? In Hollywood lingo, you could call it Citizen Kane meets Black Narcissus with a big dose of King Lear. Of course, if you called it that, they'd shelve the project and spend the money on the sequel to XXX.

Pity poor Biswambhar Roy, a king in a lonely castle. He's lost not only his family but his entire way of life. He is a mistake. A forgotten man waiting in his empty shell of a world.

He spends the last remnants of his once vast fortune on a final, lavish musical performance in his crumbling home, a last-ditch attempt to connect to the pride and joy he once felt in his life.

Not that he is innocent. He is proud and oblivious, spoiled and selfish. But surely not a bad man. Merely a displaced man. So we can cheer as he is granted one last moment of happiness and weep for him as he meets his inevitable end.

How is that Satyajit Ray remains unknown even to many die-hard cineastes in the States? I hope one of the companies will come along soon and release some of his work on DVD.

This was seen in the monthly Foreign Film Series in a society for retired university (KU) peeps. This 1958 story is remarkably subtle, about the advancing age and declining wealth of a higher caste Indian man, a Zamindar (landlord), whose income from his inherited lands is dropping from the previous levels of his wealthy ancestors because increasing river floods have lessened his rentable property and income. He's unable to adjust his manner of living to either that change or simultaneous changes in the Indian economy that lead to new economic benefits and social mobility for many in lower castes. He's especially irritated at his nouveau riche lower caste new next door neighbor whose income comes from money lending rather than through inherited property and wealth; he engages in expensive rival concerts which he cannot truly afford and these leave him even poorer. Through two extended flashbacks we learn he had been married and had a son (16? 18?); both wife and son died together on a trip. So he's alone for many years. While Indian music is his primary comfort (played in "the music room" of his palatial home), he also begins to use it as his primary club against his "upstart" neighbor. As he ages we see his memory decline, e.g., asking one of his two remaining servants, "What month is this?" before he presents one last concert for invited guests (and to belittle his rival, his lower caste neighbor, an included guest) before he then embarks on an activity which leads to his death. Great examples of Indian music (but the closed captions on the DVD we saw had white type/lettering which sometimes was not very legible against its background). The movie also very subtly raises the question -- to what extent is this person (one's self or relative or friend) going through parallel sequences in the getting old process?

Beautifully shot and with a great soundtrack, but a rather dreary story, which is a critique of idle members of the traditional zamindar (aristocrat) class, a celebration of traditional Indian music, and a depiction of the end of an era. In the film, a damn fool of a middle-aged man (Chhabi Biswas) squanders his family fortune as the portraits of four generations of his ancestors look on in his music room, where he hosts large groups of friends to lavish performances despite his dwindling funds. He likes lolling about, smoking a hookah and drinking cognac, and it's clear he likes the music as well, but what he likes even more is the prestige and status that he has, and lording it over one of his neighbors he views (and treats) as inferior.

I loved seeing and hearing the various musical instruments, the wonderful vocalizations, and the performances - especially that dancer towards the end - they were something special. The rest of it had meaning, but was less compelling for me, despite all the craft and attention to detail director Satyajit Ray put in. It would have been more interesting had we had gotten more depth and insight into some of the other characters. Certainly worth watching though.

For me the most rewarding films (or any art for that matter) are those that are acutely mindful of life and death and themselves in the midst of it. In the words of Harold Bloom, "We all fear loneliness, madness, dying. Shakespeare and Walt Whitman, Leopardi and Hart Crane will not cure those fears. And yet these poets bring us fire and light." The same with all art, much of which this film epitomizes.

"The Music Room", as it is known in English, is as much about the power of cinema as it is about that of music. It is as much about life as it is about death, both elliptically consummate by reason of each other: art as a life of inspiration, inspiration as regained strength. Art as addiction, addiction as loneliness, loneliness as death.

The ending is one of the most filmically mesmerizing moments I know of. Light and shadow, derangement and perspicuity, again life and death. And as for the Blu-ray (Region A) released by the Criterion Collection in 2011, it's phenomenal to the hilt, a cultural act in itself, in my books among their most enduring and best releases so far (perhaps only the complete Jean Vigo compares).