If it has been previously overlooked, that may be because Charulata is too damned sneaky for its own good: the film’s strange tacked-on reconciliation scene still looks subversive.īeneath the straightened 19th- century values and Mukherjee’s deft, delicate performance lies a drama that’s fit to burst with political and colonial discourse, class, proto-feminist values, music, poetry and, most of all, love. Amal and Charulata are soon locked into a strange literary rivalry, a displacement activity for their latent sexual attraction.įor many decades, Charulata was regarded as a minor work in the Ray canon, despite the director’s insistence that it was his own favourite. In order to keep her occupied, Bhupati asks his lively, romantic cousin Amal (Soumitra Chatterjee) to stay. Even in repose, her posture conveys more than most actors could manage with a lengthy soliloquy.įollowing on from 1963’s Mahanagar (The Big City), the film would mark the artist’s second and arguably most potent collaboration with Ray.īased on Rabindranath Tagore’s novella Nashtanir (The Broken Nest), Charulata chronicles the life of a bored and neglected housewife, who, caught between ancient Calcutta traditions and late imported Victorian values, must weather competing restrictive regimes.Ĭharu is privileged and educated but is barely noticed by her husband, Bhupati (Sailen Mukherjee), a wannabe newspaper mogul. Her portrayal of Charu in Charulata (The Lonely Wife) is composed of tiny motions. Working with directors Ritwik Ghatak and Satyajit Ray during the 1960s, the Benjabi born star proved to a mistress of cinematic movement.
It’s an attribute that Madhabi Mukherjee née Chakraborty knows only too well. Or picture Marisa Berenson gliding just ahead of Ryan O’Neal. Think of John Wayne framed in a doorway before striding away. Bikramjit is a workaholic and always stay busy with his editorial works. Chaiti is a young beautiful woman and wife of newspaper editor Bikramjit. With Rituparna Sengupta, Arjun Chakraborty, Dibyendu Mukherjee, Koushik Sen. We had faces.” But cinema’s golden years produced people who hardly needed faces, as they had movement. Charuulata 2011: Directed by Agnidev Chatterjee. There’s a truth to silent-screen queen Norma Desmond’s notion: “We didn’t need dialogue.
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