A Sala de Música

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).

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.

Good heavens! This is about as far from Bollywood movies (cheesy musicals) as one could get. Jalsaghar is a poignant rendering of social transition at the personal level -- the indigent aristocrat whose delusive and self-destructive obsession with bringing his music room back to life shields him from the reality of his family's economic and social collapse, and indeed hastens it; the showy nouveau-riche neighbor who embodies the rise of a new social order based on economic achievement rather than aristocratic roots and inherited wealth. There are parallels to Chekhov and Faulkner (Snopeses and Sartorises). The black and white images (the white horse!) are stunning. I saw this film in the 1980s, and remember it more clearly than the movie I saw last night. It is truly a classic.

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.

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?