195 - The Home and the World, 1984, India. Dir. Satyajit Ray.
A.D. 1907. Bengal.
Did you know women used to choose their own husbands?
Nikhil is talking to his wife Bimala.
She was arranged to marry him when she was a child. She lives, according to tradition, secluded in his palace, kept away from men and the world.
Nikhil loves Bimala.
He knows that she loves him, yet he does not fully know.
How could she know? She has never had a choice.
Nikhil is modern. He wants his wife to be free to choose. Free to choose her own life. Free to choose her own love.
If she is going to love him, he wants it to be from her own will and not out of duty.
He has a friend named Sandip.
Sandip is staying with them on the other side of the palace. Beyond the closed doors of the sunlit stained-glass hallway. Taking advantage of Nikhil's hospitality.
Sandip is the leader of the Swadeshi movement. The Swadeshi want to remove all foreign influence. India has been under British rule. The British Viceroy Lord Curzon has divided the land and placed the Muslims and the Hindus in different sections. Sandip believes he has done so to set them against each other. To keep them divided. To keep them from gaining power. Sandip wants solidarity. Sandip wants revolution.
Nikhil follows a different strategy. He states that Swadeshi is convenient for those who can afford it. They can swear off foreign goods because they can afford to buy only locally made items. But the poor traders at the marketplace rely on foreign goods to survive. If Nikhil were to enforce Sandip's demands, then the poor would have nothing and they would die.
Nikhil also sees that Sandip's methods lead to violence. A schoolboy threw a rock at Bimala's British piano teacher as she was walking to church on a Sunday morning, hitting her in the head and hurting her badly. Sandip's followers are starting bonfires, burning everything foreign. Remember book burning? Sandip himself goes to the market and demands that the traders place their goods in the bonfire. When they resist, he has his boys raid their stalls and burn their goods for them. They file complaint. They resent him. He is hurting them.
Meanwhile, the Muslims are not siding with the Hindus anyway. They have their own way of life. They are not interested in subjecting themselves to Sandip's leadership. And they are certainly not going to stop slaughtering cows to submit to Hindu custom.
Nikhil makes his own speeches. He appeals to people to compromise with one another. To live and let live. To allow for free trade. Free trade of goods both foreign and domestic. And to recognize that true solidarity with the Muslims is to give them the freedom to follow their own ways. Even if it means slaughtering cows.
All of this is happening in the movie.
Yet we are watching are the changes taking place inside Bimala.
A great deal of the film belongs to her.
When she walks through the sunlit stained-glass hallway for the first time, she grows enamored with Sandip. She helps his cause. She grows to love him. Yet she loves her husband too.
What will come of it?
Will the region break out in violence?
Will Sandip's revolution win the day?
Will the men's friendship survive their opposing viewpoints?
Will the marriage survive?
What will Bimala choose?
Sandip will confront Nikhil. "I follow the Bhagavadgita, Nikhil. I am concerned only with the action, not the result. And I consider Ravana to be the hero of Ramayana, not Rama. So I can't accept advice from the followers of Rama."
He is referring to the national epic. Rama is the prince. Ravana is the demon king. Rama is the protagonist. Ravana is the antagonist. Sandip sides with the antagonist.
Ravana kidnaps Rama's wife.
Rama kills Ravana.
Bimala will point out to Sandip that he smokes foreign cigarettes, observing an incongruity between his principles and his behavior.
He does not apologize.
He says he allows himself this one indulgence. He is hooked and cannot stop himself.
Nikhil would call this convenient.
Ray filmed The Home and the World in beautiful Eastmancolor. Watching it reminds one of watching the latter films of Jean Renoir, with the frame so lushly filled with exquisite production design in vibrant colors. Films such as The Golden Coach (1952), French Cancan (1955), and Elena and Her Men (1956). They were all filmed in Technicolor, but both processes share an affinity for rich and glorious hues.
And one remembers that Ray assisted Renoir when Renoir came to India to film The River (1951), just four years before making his own first film Pather Panchali (1955), and that Ray admired Renoir so much.
Tagore published the novel The Home and the World in 1916. He created the characters of Nikhil and Sandip as representing different personalities. Different points of view. Different solutions to the same problem. Some see Gandhi as being like Sandip, with his insistence on nationalism. Yet his pacifism more closely resembles Nikhil.
At the end of the day, Bimala will make her choice.
She will exercise her own free will.
And one of the sides will win.
At least in the home. If not yet in the world.
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