« Meenaxi, tale of three cities » by M.F. Husain (2004), is exactly that, a Bollywoodian befuddlement. The film is a pathetic attempt at building “something else” than a traditional love-story, and, because of lack of inspiration or lack of artistic common sense, the result is just a bad film. There’s everything it needs to be bad: no story, instead an arty reflexion on story-telling, elaborate touting technique, using sexy actors, suggestive but unconnected symbolism, and glossy photography (the film’s only merit). The whole thing reminds me of Shabd, another very boring movie where Aishwarya Rai and Sanjay Dutt were striving to do their best in a writer’s filmed “experiment”. The trouble with such movies is that the experimental dimension betrays the lack of experience, precisely, of the director, or perhaps more simply their lack of artistic sense: the two films are so obviously based on their fascinated desire to film the beautiful people they have in front of their camera lenses, that what they come up with is nothing more than an advertisement for their personal desires. Strikingly beautiful actors simply cannot transform their attractiveness into a movie! (As the ageing Raj Kapoor should have known).

I had actually bought this film when I wanted to write something about Tabu some time ago, and didn’t get round to watching it. But nothing could have been wiser! In Meenaxi, Tabu swerves from the hysterical to the bossy, from the mysterious to the girlish without any apparent reason… Well yes, there’s reason: now she’s the writer’s muse, and adopts an overweening tone and attitude, then she’s his creation, and tries to be who he believes she should be… Such waste is astounding. An IMDb user calls the film a “self-indulgent waste of time”. M.F. Husain is a painter, a great painter, they say… well, that’s OK. But I’m not sure he should have wandered away from his first taste. I suppose painting can associate itself with cinema, I’m sure there are examples of good directors who are also painters. But there is something which in my mind, both the painter and the director should forget when they create, and that is a fascination for the surface, for the mirror of artistic objects. The artist for me is the one who will suggest what is beyond (or below, or above) the surface of what he is painting or filming. Even if the picture shows us the painter’s (or the director’s) obsession with an object (this object could be a woman’s figure, or a young man’s seductive face, as in Meenaxi), I believe this obsession should be generalised enough for us spectators to sympathise with it, or at least react to it on our own plane of meaning and appreciation.

When I read this sort of comment “the film, while constructing a fictional story, leaves open to interpretations and readings by every viewer” (back of the Yashraj DVD box), I realise that there is a big risk that the film might well be completely hollow. Certain people just have nothing to say, or what they would have to say unfortunately has been said before, and better. In that case, instead of just remaining silent, and wait for a real message to come, they use the meta plane, where they speak about their problem of not being able to speak. For me this is as much parasitism. When you are a film-maker, either you do your job, and shoot a product, which will be consumed for what it is: a comedy which finds its justification in people’s need to have a good time, or an adventure film that people will enjoy because it shocks them out of their routine, or you have indeed something original and creative to say and make, and that’s an entirely different matter.

Because whether experimental artists like it or not, art is a mediation. It must lead us somewhere. It should take us along with it to some terrae incognitae. These unknown lands might well be inside the artists’ minds – they very often are – and they are many unchartered lands which artists will continue to make us discover, even lands we thought we would never have enjoyed visiting. For me, Francis Bacon’s paintings are such a discovery, for example. Profoundly unpleasant, but full of a meaning that oozes out if you want it or not. One can never decide beforehand if the artist’s trial is going to be artistic or not, because artists constantly reshape the boundaries of what we call art. Art has to be given the credit for trial and error. But in the case of MF Husain’s work, I can see no real innovation, no shocking originality, no creative dimension. Apart from the photography (which is superb, but self-sufficient), there is almost nothing but a succession of self-satisfied allusiveness, or cheap and disconnected advertisement-quality puffed-up odds and ends.

Well, now that I’ve poured out my spite, I’ll finish by evoking some of the pleasant things which I found in Husain’s film… There are some rather beautiful symbolical “inventions”, such as the use of these rotund pots seen rolling down the sand dunes, or when Meenaxi is lying on the edge of a pool, we can see them bobbing away on the water. Then there’s these shots of Prague, seen from unusual angles, or bathed in a variety of lights – that’s it, Husain ought to have been someone’s director of photography! That’s where his talents lie.  One last thing: the music by AR Rahman – I knew all of it through other means before watching the movie, proof of its quality and of Rahman’s reputation! But unfortunately good music doesn’t help a bad movie.

The Stranger (1991) is an atomic experiment. Satyajit Ray imagines what might happen when a normal urban family of three (the target) is bombarded with a high-energy free electron in the shape of a long lost uncle who enters their lives from outer space, and decides to hit them full blast. Will the target be disintegrated? Will it resist, and if so, what changes will it suffer? What by-products will be created in the collision?

Ray knows that we "civilised" people have a number of protections against invasions from alien elements: politeness, customs, a well established identity, social practices, etc. When somebody barges into the fabric of a given society, the society defends itself, like a body reacting against a virus. Our antibodies are: distrust, distance, verification of information, police, prison, even rejection, violently if necessary.

This uncle does not let himself be circumscribed: he will not surrender his independence. He has chosen not to live by the accepted rules of our civilisation. And so he will have to suffer the attacks of the social verification before he can be integrated as who he says he is.

This film is Ray's comment on what makes our civilisation human, or inhuman: what are the criteria which are used to decide that one of us does belong to the group? We often decree that love and trust are the paramount virtues: but are they really, when somebody who is unidentified knocks on your door, and our first reaction is suspicion? Why do we have this urgent need to protect ourselves against anything alien? Where does this fear come from? Why is adulthood so different from childhood in that respect? A fundamental film for whoever wishes to understand humanity and its limits.

(This is the comment I posted on Jaman.com, where the film can be watched easily)

The theme of the stranger (or visitor) is very common in literature and cinema. Everyone knows Albert Camus’s novel, and the film uses the reference of Captain Nemo ("Nobody") in Jules Verne’s 20 000 leagues under the sea.  That captain is a misanthropist, who combines both a secret about his identity and a “wanderlust” which makes him travel the seas. The theme been used in westerns, for example Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter. It’s also been used in other types of films, where a community is confronted to an outsider who more or less changes the community. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, by Steven Spielberg is an interesting example, because apparently (and this is something I learnt while researching for Ray’s film) Satayajit Ray is an uncredited writer of E.T. I wonder what his role was, and how much he was responsible for.

The source for the theme, from my point of view, goes back to the Jesus-Christ matrix. Jesus is the quintessential stranger, who comes to our earth unsolicited, wishes well to everyone, but almost immediately faces the problem of his identity (see Mark 2,7; 4,41) . He poses the most crucial problem to humanity: do you want to believe in a God who is that close to you? As Manomohan (Utpal Dutt) says:

Jesus gets on well with children, women, and simple people; he works miracles for them. But he faces suspicion and hatred from the wise and the powerful. Just the same as Manomohan. The jews have to check if who he pretends to be is really who he is (John 1,22). And then Jesus is rejected as the alien his fellow-citizens think he is. Only after his Resurrection will he establish his origin with some degree of success. Manomohan, likewise, feels rejected, as he leaves the Bose home, and this departure can be symbolically compared to Jesus’s death, and  then Mitra’s second departure, surrounded by the family, resembles Jesus leaving the Earth, and attracting all nations to him (remember when Manomohan says to Satyakit, the little boy of the family, when this one asks him if he will come back: “it will be your turn to come to me”).

A lot of people point out the fact that The Stranger is Satyajit Ray’s testimony, where he delivers his final message, influenced by his anthropological perspective. I’d say this is probably quite right. The film came out the year he died (1992). The no-name theme suits well somebody who has really transcended his community, his country, and has reached international, indeed universal recognition. The film is full of references, notably artistic, literary and philosophical ones, and perhaps the most interesting is the allusion to Greek philosophy, especially Plato, in which thinking takes the form of the dialogue. In Plato’s dialogues, one tries to wrench the truth from Socrates, who successfully demonstrates that those who thought they knew in fact know nothing and are victims of prejudice. Socrates too claims not to know the truth; he talks with his contradictors to make them realise it cannot be found only by cross-examination. Often the quest meets a dead-end, which will make debaters realise that to find the truth, “it takes time”. This is what Manomohan says, about the fact of knowing someone for who he is. The process is parallel to Socrates’ technique. It is only by taking the time – and pain - to realise that what you knew was false or incomplete that you can start again, and the truth will come to you (see also here).
One particularly pleasant aspect of the Stranger is Ray’s insistence on children. Of course Uncle Mitra is a grown-up child, and his main opponent, businessman Sudhindra is the typical, perhaps caricatured “experienced” elder. Innocence vs Experience. The acclaimed scene where the Uncle explains eclipses and the stupendous coincidences in cosmology (something several scientists themselves agree is close to miraculous, or “magic”) is great. This is what physicist Trinh Xuan Thuan says:

According to the anthropic principle, the universe is fine-tuned to an extraordinary precision for consciousness to appear. One must realize that our universe is determined by four basic forces and about fifteen numbers which are called physical constants. The basic forces are gravity, which keeps the planets circling the sun and our feet on the ground; electromagnetic force, which makes it possible for molecules to combine and form strands of DNA; the strong (nuclear) force, which binds protons and neutrons together to form atomic nuclei; and the weak (nuclear) force, which is responsible for radioactivity. As for the numbers, they include the speed of light, the mass of a proton, the charge of an electron or the gravitational constant. The value of these numbers has been determined with great precision: light travels at 300,000 km per second. Why 300,000 km/s and not 3 m/s? We have no idea why. We were given these numbers and we have to live with them.

It takes a child’s mind, I’d say, to accept theses realities as something more than just fact. The philosopher and the child have in common the ability to see beyond the appearances, and question reality. Why is there something in this universe, and not nothing? Where does it come from? The purely rational attitude might reject these interrogations as non-scientific. From the strictly technical side of science, this is true. But scientists are, and must be, human beings as well. They cannot (or should not) refrain, after having carefully done their best to answer the how question, refrain from asking the why question. Certainly that’s what Ray does. He even asks the “why don’t rational individuals ask themselves the why question?” Are they afraid to admit that the truth lays far beyond them?
One of Ray’s answers comes from his development on civilisation and barbarity, during the long speech that we witness between Uncle Mitra and Sen Gupta, the shrewd intellectual who comes to question him one evening. The conversation rolls on such subjects as - can we call flesh-eating primitives civilised? Can we accept polygamy as civilised? Confronted with these questions, our stranger does not hesitate. No, he says, all human practises are not humanising, there is an element of barbarity in primitives cultures, notwithstanding other elements of accomplished art and technology (the example which Manomohan gives is Altamira’s bison, the source of his admiration for primitive forms of culture). But he cleverly (Socrates-like) returns the question: our own civilisation, can it be said civilised or superior in terms of moral and educational progress? Is it civilisation when one man can, by pressing a button, send missiles that risk destroying the whole planet? One could add, is it civilisation when human bombs make themselves explode in open-air markets, outside schools? Is this humanity civilised when it tortures, maims, eradicates? Should we not prefer a more primitive form of humanity? What is the use of Michael-Angelo, Mozart and Einstein, if humanity destroys itself? Who is this humanity who kills God when He comes to visit it? 

Aag: fire. In this Early Raj Kapoor Movie, fire is a symbol of love, naturally, but also creation and destruction. It is fit that this film stands at the beginning of Raj Kapoor’s career (his first movie as an adult was in 1943), since there is a strong stance on the autonomy of the artist and creator. Indeed, doesn’t  Kewar (Raj Kapoor) refuse to follow the path laid down for him by his family, and justify it by insisting on freedom and the refusal of the easy but inauthentic future? Similarly, Raj Kapoor’s cinema probably wanted to affirm its independence at a time when young India emerged on the world scene.

But let me give you the story. It’s in fact a long flashback, told by a husband, whose face is badly burnt, to his young wife on their wedding night. She has been shocked by his appearance, and so he goes back in the past to explain. Kewal is the only son of his two protective parents, who wish to give him a good education. But the young boy (Shashi Kapoor) is completely infatuated with the stage, and together with his little neighbour Nimmi, wants to devote his life to it. He will be her Romeo and she her Juliet (that’s what the subtitles refer to; I’ve not able to catch the names of the characters that they speak about).

Kewal does nevertheless go to college, but fails at his exams. It is at that moment that we have the confrontation with his parents about his future, and that he dramatically refuses his social destiny. He leaves home, and after a few days’ aimless roaming, he spots the entrance of a theatre hall, and goes in, sliding through a door at the back. His melancholy monologue is overheard by the owner of the hall, Rajan, (Prem Nath), who thinks he has enough mettle to do something with his unused theatre.
Then starts the “romantic” part, because of the love triangle which develops between Rajan, who is also a painter, Kewal, and Nimmi (Nargis), who is not Kewal’s first love, but a gifted young actress he as director has hired for the leading role in his first play, entitled “Aag”. Upon recruiting her, we learn Kewal’s criteria for acting: the emotion which the actor creates must not be based on exterior beauty, but must come from the soul. Only the soul can express the truth which true creation needs.

Nimmi quickly falls in love with Kewal, who, if he courts her, does it more with an artist’s detachment than real devotion. But Rajan is really smitten by her. As a painter, he’s obsessed with harmony and beauty, and she corresponds to the ideal face he has been dreaming of. Of course he gets very jealous of Kewal, who comes down to earth when discovering about the intensity of the two feelings that have been burning so close to him: Nimmi’s love for him (but mostly based on his pleasing appearance, she says), and Rajan’s passion for Nimmi, also based on her striking beauty.
We can already sense some of Raj Kapoor’s message: he starts his cinematographic career by stressing the dangers of stories and shows which base their appeal on the heroes’ and heroine’s physical attractiveness. Such a basis risks forgetting the essential purpose of drama: to move the heart, to educate and please spectators with real spiritual values. Only the actors’ personal and moral involvement in their art can reach this goal. The cinema must guide towards truth and beauty, but these two go together. Truth disconnected from beauty is desiccating; beauty on its own is artificial and ambiguous.
What will Kewal do when he learns that his ideal project is hit by the very dangers he was trying to avoid? As passionate as the other two, he resorts to an irrational solution. The back of my DVD box says that “when he discovers that Rajan is also in love with her, he steps aside only to realise that Nimmi loves him. Kewal gets badly scarred when trying to douse a fire in the theatre. A horrified Nimmi switches loyalties and chooses Rajan.” But this summary omits the crucial element: Kewal decides to disfigure himself using a torch, and the pain makes him drop it, which ignites the fire, at the very moment when Nimmi is playing her role on stage, and singing:

“The world of love I have created is maligned”

Why did you love me? Why did you desert me?

In hope I pine, and my heart burns.

To burn me, is that why you deserted me?”

  So what has happened is in fact a complex sacrificial ritual: Kewal has used real fire to destroy the origin of a fire he has unwittingly ignited: Nimmi’s love for him, based (he thinks) on beauty alone. And his face is this origin. It has to be sacrificed on the altar of ideal art! But watching Nimmi play her role, and living the part with the words cited above, Kewal understands (we see him cry) that he is responsible for her inner burning and suffering, and may also be burning himself in punishment for having caused her such pain (which is ultimately a proof that he loves her). And the burning down of the theatre means that art based on artifice must be refused; dreams of beauty alienate from reality; beauty burns what it touches, it can only subsist when tempered by love from the heart.

We can also interpret the destruction of the theatre as meaning the end of Kewal’s own dream of a “pure” drama, where only the heart rules. In fact, throughout the film, all of his attempts to perform or stage a play fail; never does he reach success. Is Raj Kapoor saying here that art can only be impure, a mixture of artifice and truth, and love a necessary combination of passing (i.e. false) beauty and eternal promises? Aag would therefore be his statement that the artist must be wise enough to accept compromise? That he cannot remain in the dream of ideal beauty? Or on the contrary, does the film idealistically state that the artist must burn whatever compromises his dream of purity, and that beauty is nothing but an artifice of nature that the spirit should disregard as false? Much of the weight of the film would suggest that this second interpretation corresponds to what Raj Kapoor is saying. A theatre or a cinema based on beauty without a quest for the depth of the heart is doomed to remain earthly and false. It is a theatre/cinema of masks, which medusa-like, can burn and transfix, whereas what RK wants is an art of the real fire, that of the soul, where truth lies.

The real love which Kewal takes as a yardstick, is, in his own words, a dream, a faraway dream of “a century ago, when he was ten years old”, that child’s complicity he shared with his little neighbour Nimmi, the first and real Nimmi. Strange that such a dream should be construed as the basis for the mature artist’s position concerning his art. Childhood as the font where all truth comes from? This would sound evangelical enough. Unfortunately, the film deals with beauty in a sufficiently ambiguous way to enable another interpretation. For indeed, if there is an object which it puts to good use, which it presents as sublime and ideal, it is Nargis’ exquisite face. She is continuously photographed in a way that tells the spectator: here is purity, here is what art can aspire to.

 Naturally, we would do a disservice to Raj Kapoor if we decided that such a face was an end in itself; certainly he wanted to say: this face is perfection on earth if it is the mirror of the soul, the passage to the heart. Nevertheless, he is too much of an artist to ignore the ambiguity of beauty, and his insistence on that face, the care he takes to illuminate it, and almost shape it with his camera like a sculptor, turn it into a cinematographical object worthy of admiration and love. Beauty is understood as a sign, a sign indicating, in our imperfect world, the ideal world of truth and love. The way if is photographed, and of course the way it is connected to Nimmi’s character (she’s an honest and innocent girl) makes a divine sign, and not a satanic lure. Nimmi does say she “comes from Hell” when she meets Kewal for the first time, but I would say this is part of what Raj Kapoor wants to affirm, and this affirmation is contradicted by his deeper (and perhaps unconscious?) recognition of what he has shown us in Nimmi’s face.

So Aag stages the paradox of art (or theatre) that many thinkers have underlined: in order to reach truth and purity, the creator has to refuse the passage through facile beauty and artificiality, but of course he bumps into the fact that theatre is in its essence artificial and that beauty is a very strong language to express the way towards purity and love. Some creators think perhaps they can reach truth better or faster by sacrificing the flesh and its charms, and therefore attaining the spiritual more certainly. Because indeed beauty does deceive, it is easily turned into a charm to obtain other ends than truth and purity. Yet, if it can be sheltered enough by civilisation, by education, by social protections, it can be a guide towards the divine in man, and no art can really afford to neglect that completely. If fire is domesticated, it can yield the greatest benefits! There is always a risk that it will burn somebody, if it is too bright, too hot; but how can one prevent that? Civilisation constantly needs to be renewed by the fire of beauty and the warmth of passion, otherwise it will die of cold and old practices.

So one could say that Raj Kapoor has taken as much Kewal’s side as he has decided to criticise him: sacrifice is virtuous and beauty is a cheat; but equally one can say that beauty is god-sent and that our nature must be accepted as it is. Real art doesn’t necessarily need to follow nature, of course, but it does not necessarily need to destroy it in order to reach a form which will be more pleasing. This is where personal choice will come into play. Some artists will prefer insisting on art’s mission as an improver of nature (perhaps seen as imperfect, or fallen?); others will favour a creation which will use nature’s potential (and rich ambiguities?) in order to express a truth that is hidden inside it. The interest of Raj Kapoor’s movie is that he suggests both ways.
 

It’s become a recurrent syndrome: I need a second viewing or reading to appreciate some of India’s prominent masterpieces! (For it has been recognised as such, see this link, or this one  for example). This has been very true for Charulata (charu = attractive, beautiful), Satyajit Ray’s 1964 shooting of the Tagore novel (Nashta Neer, the broken nest). On first viewing, I was only fairly moved towards the story of this “lonely wife”. The fact that, for example, her attraction towards her brother in law is shown purely through her beautiful black eyes: - I was telling myself that this story-telling had the immense quality of real life, where love happens mostly via little signs which the mind detects clearly. Today’s cinema has the sore habit of underlining it thanks to such gross tricks! But apart from that sort of thought, I had trouble with the film’s slow-moving pace, with the seemingly unusual relationships between the characters; with the complexity of the historical situation (it takes place in 1864, in the home of a middle-class newspaper editor who hopes that his “liberal” journalistic work might change something to the British tax-system), and also I found the simplicity of the story a little off-putting. What does happen, I said to myself, in this film? A lonely wife falls in love with her brother in law, who spends some time in her household, and then leaves when the husband’s newspaper business collapses. She collapses too. Not much more, it seemed, than a simple character study, a social sketch.

Well, that’s where art needs to be trusted. And you need to trust people who tell you: “Careful! Masterpiece!” I decided to see the film a second time, and started to understand the originality of the complex family and in-law articulations between Bhupati (the newspaper editor), his wife Charu, his brother Amol, her sister in law Manda, and her brother, who swindles her husband professionally. All these characters are of the same age more or less; they belong to the same generation, they share the same historical and social references, and so the film becomes an experiment of how their desires and values interplay. All of a sudden, you have in front of you not a chance family reunion, but a careful editorial choice. A busy husband disregards the boredom of his lovely wife; her exuberant and artistic brother in law replaces him around her; they’re half observed by the sister in law who makes an interesting n°4, and the one person the husband does look upon with sagacity averts his eyes in premeditated guilt. A complex observation game takes place, with some looking in the right direction, some in the wrong direction. The game of cards between the two women is typical of this rich underlayer of intentions. Manda is governed by her emotionality, her superficiality. She plays as if all of life was concentrated in what she is doing. For Charu, who is all eyes and detachment, there is a lot more elsewhere, she is the calm and obedient housewife, and she is also the brilliant and passionate modern woman.

In keeping with Satyajit Ray’s observation games I had to re-evaluate the opening section, where Charu, locked up in her bourgeois mansion (and her social role as well-kept housewife) is watching through the darkened shutters the sun-drenched scenes in the street. It could be nothing more than an introduction to the character’s isolation and desires. She’s got her opera-house binoculars and her consummate skills underline the importance of the theme. But for Ray, she’s the centre of a show, of an observation game where the observer is observed, and observes in order to be observed. Charu is our go-between, our mediator. Modernity is thus a question of understanding the importance of looking and being looked at. As well as using that knowledge, of course (I’m alluding here to Frenchmen René Girard’s theories of mimetic societies. Check for example Deceit, Desire, and the Novel).

Let’s look at a scene where the theme of looking is so effective and subtle. One morning, Manda and Charu are in the bedroom, she’s doing some embroidery, while Manda is looking at the motifs inside a kaleidoscope which incidentally she uses like a telescope. She shouts her wonder at Charu, who scolds her for being so loud and says she’s “thinking”. Enter Amol, singing, with a Mexican hat on his head. He seems to be scolding Manda for something, but the words of his singing aren’t translated. Manda starts going away and throws the instrument on the bed, near Amol. He turns towards Charu: “What is this?” he asks of her embroidery, and Manda says “her duty”, before rushing out. Taking the instrument, he turns around, sits near on the floor the bed and sings “Brother is so lucky”, to which Charu answers, singing too: “You too will have one”. Using the kaleidoscope himself, Amol pretends he doesn’t know what she means and answers “what, hanky?” because apparently the word rhymes with duty in bengali. And she finishes off with an amused, very feminine look at him: “no, a wife”. And her mouth, pronouncing the word, kisses it gently.

In this scene, we have an extremely elaborate interplay of purposes, which are symbolically expressed by the non-verbal language of the kaleidoscope and the meta-language of poetry. On the surface, things are socially and morally acceptable. But in fact the characters have been playing with the social codes; or rather Satyajit Ray has made them subvert them, enough to allude to the undercurrent of desire and passion between them. Manda is trying to see beyond her status, but is blocked from noticing anything but a self-reflected beauty. Charu, who is applying her mind, sees further, and when Amol enters, can follow his game of subversion with a graceful irony. He plays with his brother’s wife’s duty, and uses the kaleidoscope to stop Charu from noticing his double-dealing. But she’s perfectly aware of his game and rights his bantering to an acceptable reality: such plying with the social rules only means one thing: you need a woman to stabilise you. Yet, as she plays with him thus, she doesn’t realise that she is drawn towards him and is succumbing to his charm. No, in fact she does realise it, but she probably thinks herself strong enough both to resist him and to let herself slide pleasurably in his clever subversion of a social order which she accepts but makes her suffer.

So we see that Charulata, far from being a social vignette, a “film de genre” (by which the French mean the cinematic representation of a given society at a certain period with its flaws and prejudices), contains an examination of questions that moral and spiritual thinkers and artists consider essential: what makes man (and woman) the social animal that s/he is? To what extent are the social codes that we use in our everyday life a source of fulfilment or of alienation? How much control must we exert on our instincts? Should we accept to transfer all this control to laws that we can then play with, provided we don’t go too far, or should all laws be constantly subjected to re-evaluation? I’d say Amol’s character corresponds to that questioning: it’s true he’s only a retarded student, he hasn’t got a real job yet. But he writes romantic stories. He’s a writer. And so we have him wander around questioning the conventional assets of the bourgeois society with its established order and values. Bhupati too is questioning the reigning order. And Charu as well, even if it’s in spite of herself.

There would be many other fascinating scenes to dissect in the film, notably the one in the garden, where Charu is on the swing above a lying Amol, but other passages would also deserve analysis. For instance, the storm scene: “There’s going to be storm!” shouts one character, and Amol storms in the household at that very moment, his hair and his shirt full of wind and dust. Or that scene between the two brothers who pit their strength one against the other in an arm wrestling one evening. In fact the film is made up of metaphorical scenes throughout. And the deceptively simple plot is like a matrix – and what better matrix for a criticism of a civilisation than the love triangle? – which commands a re-examination of the social codes and laws, and testifies to its fascinating modernity.