“From Bhupati’s Political Views to Amal’s Poetic Rhythm, in between somewhere Charulata lost herself.”
The film starts off with a scene where we see Charulata (Madhabi Mukherjee) moving around the house, admiring the streets outside her house with a tiny telescope in her hands, moving towards her bookshelf, taking out Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s novel Kapalkundala, in both these opening scenes we are given a clear overview of Charulata’s daily life, struggling with her loneliness. Her husband Bhupati (Shailen Mukherjee), a liberal who’s fighting against the wrong doings of the British Government in India through his press.
Apart from the opening scenes, there are a lot of other scenes which are a great example of visual storytelling without using any dialogues. For instance, Charu standing at the doorway of her bedroom and Bhupati passing by without so much as noticing her, and she immediately raising her tiny telescope to her eyes as a metaphor to bring her husband closer to herself.
And then also the important part of the film, there’re the performances. That the three central characters of the film give their career best performances in the same film speaks volumes about this aspect of the film.
From the beginning of the film till the Climax the show is solely owned by Charulata, you fall in love with her character, she has a lot of things to say but what she needs is just the time. She’s the finest female characters ever essayed in the Indian Cinema. In an another scene, which proves that Satyajit Ray was definitely a visionary, the scene in the printing press where Bhupati is giving Amal an overview about the working of his press, where he shows him his editorial in the newspaper which is criticizing the Government, and Amal reacts to it in a sarcastic way, calling it as an act of Sedition which we all know is quite relatable in today’s times. A lot more snaps from this film & of course Madhabi Mukherjee, makes it a great Canvas of Story.