Rating: 18/20
Plot: A very rich landowner lives in a palace with his wife and son. He's most proud of his exquisite music room, a lavishly-decorated chamber in which he can throw parties where people can smoke from hookahs and listen to hired musicians. Times are changing, however, and his obsession with music and
Warning: This movie contains graphic lethargy.
Like the dude's music room, this movie is just exquisite. And perhaps lethargy is the wrong word there because lethargy has more to do with a lack of enthusiasm or energy. This movie is just slow. Really slow. And if you don't like Indian music--sitars, tablas, sarangi, zithers, harmoniums, ankle bells--then you'll want to steer clear of this because there are extended musical numbers in that music room as well as a the score by Vilayet Khan. There are times when it feels like this is the type of music that God listened to on the 7th day. There are three (maybe four) of these concerts in the music room, but two really stand out. The first has a warbly-voiced guy and gradually builds with the stringed instruments and tablas while a storm builds outside. Shot of the band are juxtaposed with shots of the storm, a bug, and a chandelier. The final music performance contains some of the most incredible dancing you'll ever see, the sort of thing that can make a person fall in love with human beings for the first time. So musically, this thing is damn near perfect.
Akira Kurosawa once said that "to have not see the films of Ray is to live in the world without ever having seen the moon or the sun." I'm not sure why I didn't check out Satyajit Ray earlier, especially since he's considered so influential. If Wes Anderson cites him as an influence, I should probably pay attention. Something Ray really seems to understand better than most directors--maybe not Kurosawa--is that stories and characters need space to breathe. This movie gives you a ton of breathing space. The story itself could be told in about ten minutes, but unless you just don't like those lengthy musical numbers, I don't think there's a wasted second in this film. And there's almost nothing artificial about the thing. Ray forces your attention on exactly what you should be focused on--grass hanging from a character's foot, a chandelier, the main character's lips--and pretty much cuts everything else out. So in a way, this film is minimalistic. The story manages to be both tragic and strangely uplifting with a main character (Huzur Biswambhar Roy played by Chhabi Biswas) who is flawed enough to make you not really respect him but human enough for you to feel his pain and loss. The ending sequence on a beach is a delicate metaphor, the kind of thing you'd expect to see in a Bergman movie, but it's a superb scene before that--the winding-down of the man's last music party--that will stick with me. It's a scene in which we and Roy are reminded by one of his servants that "lamps do go out" right after we've watched it happened. Exquisite.
I think we might go with Satyajit Ray the Oprah Movie Club pick for April. Like anybody gives a shit!
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