194 - Charulata, 1964, India. Dir. Satyajit Ray.

Thursday, July 13, 2017

194 - Charulata, 1964, India.  Dir. Satyajit Ray.

The Broken Nest.

Charu sews a monogram.  She embroiders a B.  Onto a handkerchief.  For her husband.  Because she loves him.

She hums a name.

Bankim.

The great writer.  The novelist.  The composer of India's national song.

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay.

She looks for a book.

She looks through her opera glasses.

She looks out the window.

She watches a man with a closed umbrella walk outside.

She looks through the room.

A beautiful room.  With great wallpaper.  And fine furniture.

Charu feels like the furniture.

A kept woman.

A piece of property.

She is bored.

Her husband, Bhupati, a newspaper writer, is concerned about her.  He invites his cousin Amal to stay with them.

Amal comes in like a storm.

Amal is a poet.

Bhupati may be a writer, but he is not into literature.  He will not be reading Bankim.  Or the literary magazines that come to the house.  He is political.  He has work to do.  His uses his newspaper, The Sentinel, to affect social and political change.  Not to speak eloquently of flowers and meadows.

Maybe Amal can help her.

Yes.

Amal helps her.

Amal and Charu form a friendship.

They spend days in the garden talking about literature.  About their dreams.

Charu is happy.  She sings as she swings.  She sings a Tagore song, her character being unaware that she herself is a Tagore creation.  As this film was based on a Tagore novella.

The film in fact is filled with literary and musical delights.

Before Amal's arrival, Charu played cards idly with her sister-in-law Manda.

Now she has someone with whom to share her heart.  Her cousin-in-law Amal.

Amal calls Manda a traditional woman and Charu a modern woman.  He encourages Charu.  He encourages her to publish.  She publishes one of her stories in a literary magazine.  One of those magazines that her husband has no time to read.

Her heart grows full.

While in the garden she realizes her feelings.  Discovers the love that has arisen in her heart.

But Amal is a good man.  Just as Bhupati is a good man.  He will not take advantage of Charu any more than Bhupati would want to neglect her.

He leaves.

And Charu's heart is full of his memory.  Broken over the loss.

Bhupati comes home to Charu.

And as with the ceiling painting in the Sistine Chapel.

And as with John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn."

And as with Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows.

The frame stops.

Just before their hands meet.

Just before their fingers touch.

And the film ends with pregnant possibilities.

Anyone who has had his heart awakened by literature, or by art, has felt what Charu feels.

The desire to experience.  The desire to express.  The desire to share.

And the loneliness that arises from having no one with whom to share.

The world may be full of artists.  And people who appreciate art.  But where are they who will share with me?  And why am I alone in my world?  And why do those who love me not love what I love--even if only as a way of loving me?

Where is my companion?

We feel for Charu.

We feel for Bhupati too.

He too is a dreamer.

And he who claims not to be a writer makes a living writing about political idealities that will never come to be.

Two people who write.  Two people who dream.  Two people who write about what they dream.

But who cannot read each other.

And cannot understand.