India, 1984
Directed by Satyajit Ray
With Swatilekha Sengupta (Bimala Choudhury), Victor Banerjee (Nikhilesh Choudhury), Soumittra Chatterjee (Sandip Mukherjee)
Surging high in their red incandescence in a dark environment the flames seem to devour the screen and it is against the bright menace that the whitish titles appear. A world is burning, the world where the narrator, the aggrieved young woman who first appear in the film, used to live peacefully but where she is consumed now by passion springing from politics as well as from her heart. The film is the chronicle of the encounters and incidents which have altered the course of her wealthy housemaid life, with fires cropping up to ravage streets and minds, till the final disaster, the loss of the man who has helped being the intelligent woman she is, which follows the loss of the man who was determined to bring more than a revolution in the thriving corner of the Raj-ruled Bengal where the story takes place.
Bimala Choudhury’s memories starts in the intimacy of her married life with Nikhilesh Choudhury, with quiet and refined scenes shot in their richly cozy, dimly-lit bedroom, after the dark, the time for confidences and various personal thoughts. That both deeply love and fondly respect each other transpire swiftly but so do both the revolution concealed by these ordinary scenes of an upper-caste marriage as it is supposed to be live at the beginning of the 20th century and its limits. Again all expectations, and to his wife’s delight, Nikhilesh Choudhury has given her a strong education, enabling her to enjoy a modest intellectual life.
Nikhilesh Choudhury wanted to be modern and to have a modern wife, that is freer and smarter than what tradition allows, blaming by the way Islam for having tainted Hindu mores (it may be the purdah has a Muslim origin but patriarchal views also feature in Hinduism). And he got it. However, when their rambling conversation touched on politics he seems genuinely surprised the wife knows about the crisis shaking the British rule over Bengal and what is the Swadeshi, the political movement aiming at promoting Indian-made products to the detriment of the British imports and at defending a nationalist and proud view of India in opposition to the ruling Empire. She notes with amusement his surprise and mocks him for forgetting he wanted a smart woman – Bimala Choudhury does not feel slighted but the incident remains embarrassing.
Another revolution is set in when Bimala Choudhury is taken by Nikhilesh Choudhury down the brightly lit corridor, lined in part with walls carrying splendid tall stained-glassed windows, connecting bedrooms and other private parts of his palace to the lavish living room where he welcomes and hosts visitors. If she gets out of the purdah it is to be introduced to an old friend of her husband and a key Swadeshi leader, Sandip Mukherjee. Both the lady and the guest are impressed with each other, but she remains conventionally demure, if only, as the night conversation implied, she does not fully trust and like the politician who is as confidently talkative and thoughtlessly brazen but also strikingly fascinating as he is on the streets.
The scene vividly shows three persons seemingly pleased to spend time together, to banter, and to share their views and beliefs. But things would take another, far somber and harrowing direction, as days go by and for two different reasons, each pertaining to the deep feelings of the husband and wife. Even if he likes him a lot and shares his political convictions, Nikhilesh Choudhury rejects Sandip Mukherjee’s demands.
Even as the British rulers are trying to split Bengal and to pit Hindus against Muslims, the wealthy merchant and landowner, previously industrialist (with little success), is worried that the Muslims small traders and workers counting on him would be penalized by the effort to ramp up the trade of Indian goods that are far more expensive than what the British let in in the colony. Nikhilesh Choudhury rejects an Indian nationalism creating a wider economic gap and more social misunderstandings. But as older voices raise their own grievances, Nikhilesh Choudhury grows disturbed by the fiery rhetoric and dubious actions of his friend, who cannot accept his ideas and the influence of his movement can be curtailed, even if it implies cracking down on the Muslim minority and more broadly relying on violence. Political and personal ambitions end up fraying the old bonds and the men are set to clash, with the politician invited to leave and go elsewhere.
At the same time, Bimala Choudhury lets go her doubts and forebodings, getting seduced first by Sandip Mukherjee’s slogans and then his personal charm. The lavish living room, cleverly explored anew by the camera each time both meet there, becomes the stage of a romantic drama, the woman getting under the spell of the man against her will, getting more confused, both impatient and desperate, and eventually getting boldly kissed. The faithful wife is cheating on her loyal husband, forging a fresh and vibrant bond with his old pal that would extend foolishly to backing, with her money, his political dirty tricks, even as the older and worn bond between the two men is fraying.
How tormented Bimala Choudhury becomes has been already hinted by the first sentences of her memories at the film’s beginning: but as political events get more dreadful and hopeless while passion runs too high, the camera powerfully captures what it does mean to a previously radiant face, a previously carefree spirit, a previously happy person. Making the situation more poignant is the sincerity of Sandip Mukherjee’s sentiments: he is truly in awe to her charm. Nevertheless, he remains first and foremost married with ideas and the political struggle of the day his intransigence, fulled by zeal as well as arrogance, turns toxic. A conflagration is inevitable, both at home and in the world, hurting Bimala Choudhury, flames of racial conflict burning in the night while the little candles of the bedroom highlight distress and tears.
More tears are to be shed. The film seems to reach despite the odds a happy ending deeply moral: Sandip Mukherjee makes amends and runs away, Bimala Choudhury confesses, Nikhilesh Choudhury embraces her indulgent and grateful as the pictures circle back to their first compositions. But riots keep on raging, the disaster which is pushing the wealthy merchant to bring to Kolkata his household but which is also prompting him to face danger to rescue folks before leaving. He will not come back: the story ends in the broad daylight, with a casket proceeding and a subtle and ingenious superimposition of images where the young woman is deprived of her colorful and wonderful saris and dressed in the simple white clothes of a widow, according to a tradition absorbing her back. Walking down the corridor leads her to go back to a dull and stifling state so distant from any revolution, any hope, any love. What an ordeal for such a smart lady.
The deep originality and arguably genius of the narrative lies in blending romance and history, a complex and toxic triangular relationship with the drive of the nascent Indian nationalism and its clash with Britain. Bimala Choudhury is firmly at the center of a story that celebrates the call for more liberal and national principles and yet offers a deeply critical, worried, vision of the nationalist discourse. The lead female character is endowed with a real agency and cast as a sensitive and endearing character but errs on the wrong side while the man she falls for is acknowledged as an appealing leader with the right ideas but with traits and behaviors betraying a far more contentious and darker side. And the betrayed husband and friend stands as slightly bumbling but intensely sensitive, aware of the incoming political disaster though blind to what unfolds in his living room, a movingly imperfect man still fighting against the worst outcome.
This is the adaptation of an important novel of the famous Bengali artist, writer, intellectual, and activist Rabindranath Tagore. Director Satyajit Ray (who attended the rural university Tagore set up) has picked once again one of his books, which echoes some of his constant interests, from social and political evolution of India and its aristocratic class, from “Jalsaghar – The Music Room” in 1958 to “Shatranj ke kjilari – The Chess Players” in 1977, to the freedom women need and acquire, even as they enter in conflict with tradition, like “Mahanagar – The Big City” 1963 or “Charulata” in 1964. Ray simplifies the novel’s structure and settles for a deliberate pace, with a runtime of no less than 141 minutes, letting feelings slowly bloom and burn in the exquisitely elegant palace of Nikhilesh Choudhury and roving in the little peasant world around it to record carefully how politics hold a sway over popular moods and brew the final disaster.
The film seems a bit too slow and out of time as the director sticks to his style but it somehow fits what is a complex and lasting debate about social identity, with an impact on the personal level as well on a far wider scale. The call for tolerance between communities resonates even more strongly when it is remembered the film was wrapped up as the nation was engulfed in a bitter clash between the Center and the Sikhs, leading to the assassination of Premier Indira Gandhi, herself a highly controversial and troubling figure, in October 1984. Another poignant and sympathetic portrait of a woman, “Ghare-Baire – The Home and the World” nevertheless suggests a degree of pessimism: Ray is not a man to bear many illusions it seems and his obvious humanism remains hedged with melancholy for souls struggling to live the right way.