La sala da musica

Just to appreciate Roshan Kumari's legendary performance -one of the most mesmerizing dancing sequences ever filmed, this masterpiece deserves a repeated viewing.

There is something savage, auto-destructive but also the purest in form about the landlord's passion for music and childish vanity in front of his peers, which made me ponder over the place of music in our society long after the credits end. In the age of MTV and MP3, we are used to the idea of carrying routinely our favorite songs everywhere from streets to bathroom, and it's pity that we hardly experience anymore the authentic ambiance of intimate music gathering such as miraculously acted and filmed in Jalsaghar. Music in other era and other place must have been high point and extra-ordinary moment of community life, source of the spiritual inspiration for civil life as well as its destruction. The decor and lighting of the music room is sumptuous and otherworldly, in perfect contrast with the wearisome monotony of domestic scenes the declining aristocrat is forced to endure.

When I first saw the Music Room in a big screen at the Ice-skating Ring Calcutta, I found it to be slow but intriguing. Since then whenever I watched this film, I felt I rediscovered it once again. When I found that the Criterion Collection has released the DVD version, I didn't think twice to buy it from Amazon though the price is more than sum total of all the Satyajit DVD/VCDs I have ever purchased. With a superb digital restoration, it is an audio-visual pleasure to watch the khayal recital in the backdrop of the looming disaster, the Kathak performance, tinkling sound of the chandelier, the night scene and so on. Analysis of the film by the French television channel and by Andrew Robinson is a delightful bonus. What a love and perfection that have gone in to restore this masterpiece from oblivion in this heritage apathetic country!

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.

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.

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.