Charulata aka The Lonely Wife (Satyajit Ray, 1964)

date watched: April 18, 2009
location: Film Society of Lincoln Center
Part of the "First Light: Satyajit Ray from the Apu Trilogy to the Calcutta Trilogy" series

Ray is truly one of the 20th century's best film auteurs. He seems to exemplify Alexandre Astruc's notion of the caméra-stylo* flawelessly.
The imagery is that of the cadence of a well-written poem, and Ray, coming from a long line of artistic intellectuals, wields the same power his ancestors had with the pen, except he does it with the camera.
The swing scene is, I daresay, one of the most beautiful scenes in film I have ever seen thus far.
I found a clip in youtube, but it cannot do the scene justice, since the quality is so horrible:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcUHbTBElO0

Madhabi Mukherjee's performance as Charulata is mesmerizing: she has so much control over her facial expressions, and it is difficult not to identify with her.
The ending is hauntingly poetic, also. The three or so freeze frames of the wife, the husband, and the servant really places the spectator within the household. We are thus given the opportunity to be the patriarch, the lonely but intelligent wife, and the senile servant, all at once. Additionally, the heading of "Ruined Nest" appears, it is suggestive, but not in a manipulative way whatsoever. It merely invites the spectator to imagine the life beyond the frame, but simultaneously suggesting that this is where the film ends, and has gone as far as the frame can reach.

I am truly excited to watch other Ray films that aren't widely shown thanks to the Walter Reade theater.

*French film critic Alexandre Astruc first coined the term caméra-stylo, or "camera-pen." To use the helpful SAT analogy tool to practice (sadly, analogies are not part of the exam anymore):
writer : pen :: filmmaker : camera