CHARULATA Movie Review

The Lonely Wife

In 19th-century Bengal, Charulata (Madhabi Mukherjee) is bored and frustrated by her wealthy, pretentious, and self-aggrandizing husband, Bhupati, who has no time for her. When the naive but insensitive Bhupati suggests that his cousin Amal might make an innocently diverting companion for his wife, he has no way of knowing that Charulata's friendship with Amal will quickly turn sexual. Satyajit Ray's astounding and revolutionary Charulata, based on a story by Rabindranath Tagore, is the story of a woman awakening not only to discover her own repressed sexuality, but discovering that the restraints and oppression of her male-dominated society are becoming intolerable. Pleasing her husband is impossible, as is pleasing her lover, who gets out of the kitchen as soon as the pilot light is lit. Forbidden to express herself through writing, her idleness enforced as a status symbol of her class, Charulata's self-awareness dawns on her gradually, but then pours into her like an emotional flood, which Ray has held back until the end. Ruthlessly honest, bracingly satirical, and deeply moving, Charulata—which was Ray's favorite of his own films—is a masterpiece.

NEXT STOP … The Music Room, Mahanagar, The Silences of the Palace

1964 117m/B IN Shailan Mukherjee, Shyamal Ghoshal, Gitali Roy, Bholanath Koyal, Suku Mukherjee, Dilip Bose, Joydeb, Bankim Ghosh, Subrata Sensharma, Majhabi Mukherjee, Soumitra Chatterjee; D: Satyajit Ray; W: Satyajit Ray; C: Subrata Mitra; M: Satyajit Ray, Rabindranath Tagore. VHS COL