Le Saint

A religious charlatan claims to have been around for thousands of years, and no matter how outrageous his lies, has an entire village rapt and under his influence. This includes a widower and his daughter, upsetting the plans of marriage for her suitor, so the young man turns to his friends for help. The film is based on a short story by Parashuram, but it seems like a variation of Molière's Tartuffe, or reminded me of it anyway. I certainly like the concept of exposing religious hypocrisy anywhere and everywhere, but the story here is too linear and simple to make a great film. Ray doesn't flesh out his characters or develop any other subplot, so even at 65 minutes it felt a little dry. It's kind of interesting to compare this fictional character to other con-men though.

Mahapurush / The Holy Man (1965) : Brief Review -

A socially important topic to expose religious fraudulent but Ray's one of rare Flabby works inviolable to his high standard. Mahapurush is second half of double features 'Kapurush-Mahapurush' which follows a completely different story. Kapurush was a lovestory which doesn't have anything that can bring social change but Mahapurush is about exposing racket of Imposter Saint which was definitely a very important topic for society. Now let me tell me you that Kapurush is a Classic but Mahapurush is not. Well, that doesn't mean the film is bad. Sometimes better content fails to impress as much as fictional and dramatic theories and that's what exactly the case here. A devout Hindu family falls victim to a charlatan posing as a holy man and then one of the educated and sensibile guy gathers a small team to expose the fraud baba without hurting the religious sentiments of people. Even though Mahapurush has a better content than Kapurush, it fails to come out as a Classic because of limited screentime and regular filmmaking features. However, Mahapurush is more interesting and more entertaining than any other Satyajit Ray film made by then. The faking lectures and fictional stories of Baba are fun to watch. Some scientific and mathematical references are there for educated audience and it's very likeable too. The cast members are quite good with their roles and the writing of the characters is also very nice and relatable to common men. The screenplay is engaging, the dialogues are fine and the cinematography is okay (pretty dark unreasonably). Satyajit Ray makes this film with the light theme which hadn't been done by him then, and so it can be called a worthy attempt to some extent. Overall, good but nothing great as we expect from the Great Filmmaker.

RATING - 6.5/10*

By - #samthebestest.

We came to know about the concept of double-features from the 'Grindhouse' project made in 2000's. This one, even though having completely different source, was released together with the yin and yang kind of title; even I have seen photos and posters of these getting released in some theatres in Calcutta. Kapurush : story of a coward lover in a dark themed drama; speaking about contemporaneous, do not miss this. Mahapurush : story of a con godman in comedy genre - speaking about relevance, watch this right now. I think this was the first project of Ray with Soumendu Roy as his new DoP

I was there said the Holy Man and many other claims were made by the clever con from India who has camped out at a believers house. However Love conquers Con and a camp fire puts the Holy man on the run, but not without compensation!

Those who are into the afterlife, this a a must movie to see. Beware of false prophets and you will overcome such scams.

(1965) The Holy Man/ Mahapurush (In Bengali with English subtitles) COMEDY DRAMA

Adapted from the story "Birinchi Baba" by Rajshekhar 'Parashuram' Basu, music, co-written and directed by Satyajit Ray that has popular spiritual leader, Birinchi Baba (Charuprakash Ghosh) and his sidekick, Kyabla (Rabi Ghosh) happened to share the same boxcar with a retired lawyer and his daughter, Buchki ((Gitali Roy) welcoming them to their home. It is there, is when things become complicated is when the daughter, Buchi were given instructions by the guru to stray far away from the student, Satya (Satindra Bhattacharya) who happen to take a liking to her. Once Satya and his peers begin to realize this, they then attempt to go to great lengths to expose the guru, Birinchi Baba and his sidekick for who they really are, as a fraud or as con men.

Saw this on TCM and was late at night after seeing Satyajit Ray's other movie "Devi" or "The Goddess", and although it was labelled as a comedy, I did not see a single thing I thought was funny. It was amusing but it could be the fact that I was kind of tired, despite spiritual con men is still happening today.