The Lonely Wife
“All of life is like a rhythm.
Birth … death. Day … night.
Happiness … sorrow. Meeting … parting.
Like the waves on the ocean, now rising … now falling.
One complements the other.”
IT IS HARD to believe that Satyajit Ray’s 12th and finest movie was released more than 60 years ago. With its English title reimagined as The Lonely Wife, Charulata (1964) is the captivating tale of the spouse of a kind and yet self-absorbed newspaper editor and proprietor who prides himself on being a radical free-thinker but whose liberal views, ironically, fail to accommodate the feelings and literary aspirations of his nearest and dearest.
Based on Rabindranath Tagore’s novella, Nashtanirh (The Broken Nest), and set in late 19th-century colonial Calcutta (Kolkata), Bengal, the film explores universal themes of loneliness, intellectual longing and emotional awakening. With its effortless fluency and gaiety akin to a Shakespearean spectacle, Satyajit Ray (2nd May 1921–23rd April 1992) famously said of his masterpiece that if he could ever be given the opportunity to remake one of his movies, he would produce Charulata exactly the way it was.
© Satyajit Ray, Charulata
“What is destined to happen will happen.”
The film’s titular protagonist is a cultured, yet bored housewife, played by the hypnotically beautiful Indian actress, Madhabi Mukherjee, who spends her days doing embroidery and looking at passersby in the street below through a pair of ornate golden binoculars. Although her husband, Bhupati (Sailen Mukherjee) loves and cares for her deeply, he is emotionally distant and largely unaware of her inner world and unfulfilled creative potential.
In a moment of sensitivity, he arranges for his charming wastrel cousin Amal (Soumitra Chatterjee), an aspiring writer, to stay with them, hoping that he will provide Charulata with intellectual stimulation and companionship. Inevitably, they form a close bond over their mutual appreciation of the arts and literature, which eventually blossoms into a subtle and complex rapport.
“Trust, faith—are these just empty words?
Is there no honesty?
Is it all just sham and lies?”
Visually exquisite, with its subtle textures and poignant symbolism (the caged bird is not wasted on the viewer), Satyajit Ray’s motion picture weaves a delicate narrative of two people conflicted by their sense of marital duty counterpointed with the yearnings of their innermost hearts.
With modern cinema always on the side of lovers, we expect a romance to bloom and yet the director explores alternative possibilities, with the ambiguous hope of reconciliation between Bhupati and his frustrated wife the inevitable denouement of the narrative. Evinced by the final freeze-framing of extended hands (a deliberate artistic choice, not a result of film damage), Satyajit Ray wisely prevents a romanticized or falsely optimistic resolution of this richly nuanced and beautiful drama.
© Satyajit Ray, Charulata
“Intellectual power may be good in its own way,
but it is not intellectual eminence that constitutes individual or national greatness.
It is energy, patriotism, devotion to duty,
the capacity for self-sacrifice, an unflinching regard for truth.”
For me, the most visually arresting scene is when Charulata imagines the village of her childhood to furnish ideas for a piece she intends to write for a literary magazine. As she looks intently into the camera lens, visions of her ancestors materialize over her face into view. Indeed, her creativity and subsequent aptitude for the written word empower her with a sense of female autonomy in an era when women were bound by their domestic mores and the need to be decidedly seen but not heard.
Moreover, when we consider Bharata Muni’s Natyashastra, an ancient Indian treatise on the performing arts and a foundational text for understanding Indian theatre, Satyajit Ray’s cinematic offering becomes a stellar example of the import of emotional experience and spiritual transcendence within the context of the higher arts.
Post Notes
- Feature image: © Satyajit Ray: Charulata
- Rabindranath Tagore: Gitanjali
- Carl Theodor Dreyer: Ordet
- Robert Harris: Conclave
- Shūsaku Endō: Silence
- Paolo Sorrentino: The Great Beauty
- Pavel Lungin: The Island
- Abbas Kiarostami: 24 Frames
- Alain Resnais: Last Year at Marienbad
- Jean Cocteau: The Art of Cinema
- Andrei Tarkovsky: Cinematic Genius
- Nuri Bilge Ceylan: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
- Sergei Parajanov: The Colour of Pomegranates
- Ben Rivers: Two Years at Sea
- Michelangelo Frammartino: Le Quattro Volte
- Bill Viola & Michelangelo: Life Death Rebirth
- Marie Menken: Arabesque for Kenneth Anger
- Abbas Kiarostami: Certified Copy
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