The Big City (Mahanagar)

1963 Ray movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: An extended family is tested when a wife gets a job as a door-to-door salesperson and starts wearing lipstick.

One of my biggest--if not THE biggest--film-watching embarrassments is not seeing enough movies by Satyajit Ray, probably a combination of not knowing how to say his first name and not being able to spell his first name without looking it up several times. I loved The Music Room, and I liked the lone film I've seen from the Apu trilogy (I know, I know), so it doesn't even make sense that I've not seen anything else. That should be the #1 thing I focus on fixing about my life in 2020. I mean, almost everything else is perfect about me and the world around me, so I might as well focus on this.

I think I'm going to just make numbered lists instead of reviews in 2020. I'll experiment with it here. Let me know if you love it or only like it.

1) The titular "big city" has no scale at all until one of the final shots. A pair of characters are standing in what I'd call an alley. They're having a conversation about this and that, and the camera pulls back eventually to reveal just how expansive the city is around this family. It engulfs them! The only other real glimpses of the city that we get are the view from the window of the wife's boss. Those shots make it look like a big city, too.

2) That's right before a brilliant final shot with a pair of light bulbs, one that Ray says didn't have any intended symbolism but is great because it's so open to interpretation anyway.

3) It took me too long to figure out that the wife's work friend--an Anglo-Indian lady--was an outsider, a target of racism. I loved the rhythm of her curses. "Why shouldn't we get 10% too, damn it," the "damn it" without emphasis and just kind of falling off the end of the sentence.

4) The wife's mole deserves a spot in this list! I have a mole myself, you know, only it's not very attractive, seemingly only there so that various people can say, "Wow, you really need to get that thing checked out."

5) My favorite shot is this crawling close-up of the wife's father-in-law when he learns that the wife has gotten this job. The score is creeping, and it just zooms to this old fart's face, so defeated. That scene ends with another great shot of a glass of milk. Or at least it's something milky.

6) The father-in-law was a teacher, and there are some scenes with him going to former students and asking for favors--free glasses, etc. As a teacher myself, I couldn't help appreciate the idea that students owe a debt to their teachers. I can't think of any reason why I should find out where my former students work and go ask for free stuff or heavy discounts.

7) The significance of lipstick! Cause the lips, they are a-changin'.

8) "If you were a little bit less attractive, I'd want you to get a job." Sure, the husband's a dick in the early scenes--kind of a dick in a sneaky way, but you really feel for him at the end. He's so silent in the second half of the movie, wandering through scenes like he's a ghost.

9) Another great shot has the husband eavesdropping in a restaurant. He's in the background--silent, a ghost--and another couple is in the foreground. There's one slow camera pan that is just remarkable.

10) More advertisements need to refer to people as "nitwits," I think.

11) There's one moment after a character makes a major decision when Ray--for the only time in the movie, I believe--switches to a handheld camera. That was startling and very effective.

12) Ray wrote the music for this, and it's mostly really great. I could have sworn I heard Yoko Ono creeping in at one point, but I guess that wouldn't have made any sense.

13) I like how one important plot point involves a character wanting to win a crossword puzzle competition so that he can see a bridge that was constructed by monkeys.