Amazon.com essential video: Made in 1964, this Satyajit Ray period piece is set in a Calcutta about to enter the last decade of the 19th century. Madhabi Muherjee, who also had the leading role in Ray's The Big City (1963), portrays a bored and neglected housewife whose husband, Bhupati (Sailen Mukherjee), is spurred by his passion for his political newspaper, The Sentinel, and not by his passion for her.
Bhupati is not a bad man, just a distracted one, and in an effort to appease his guilt, he asks his young and very handsome cousin, Amal (Soumitra Chatterjee) to encourage Charulata in her writing. After all, she is an intelligent woman and such an undertaking will keep her occupied. But he tells Amal not to let Charulata know of his mission.
Over the course of time the inevitable happens and the two fall in love, never revealing their feelings to each other. Bhupati finds out accidentally how his wife feels and is crushed. This isn't his only problem. Another relative, the bookkeeper at Bhupati's paper, embezzles money and compromises The Sentinel's chances for success.
Ray manages to create a highly charged atmosphere of restrained yet innocent lust. Inspired by New Wave film makers Truffaut and Goddard, Ray starts to experiment with his visual style. Madhabi Muherjee's performance is touching. If you love Ray, see this movie. If you don't love Ray, you will after seeing it. --Luanne Brown
Foreign Film Fans Take Heed! A CLASSIC by one of the world's best! Satyajit Ray was simply one of the greatest auteurs in the history of film. If you haven't had the privilege of seeing one of his creations, then by all means, please heed my advice. I was first introduced to Ray's work twenty years ago in a film class I took in college. I'm no maven in regards to his movies, having only seen five of them. However, what I can tell you is this, all five of those films were excellent. This one in particular is jewel and many critics believe it to be his magnum opus.
"Charulata" (The Lonely Wife) is based on the short story "Nastanirh" (The Broken Nest) by Pulitzer Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore (whose work I have yet the pleasure of perusing). The story takes place in the late 19th century India and tells the tale of a lonely housewife Charu (short for Charulata), very reminiscent of Flaubert's Emma Bovary. Charu and her rather detached, older husband Bhupati live a quiet, well-to-do life. She is a very beautiful woman, with tons of money and all the time in the world to enjoy her passions - the arts, literature and poetry. Yet her workaholic husband seems to be more concerned with his job than his marriage. And alas, she is all alone, ailing from that distasteful disorder of ennui that seemingly plagues so many kept women.
However, the sun shines a bit brighter for our heroine when Bhupati's young, handsome cousin Amal arrives for a visit. Bhupati, who is far from a heartless man and feels sympathy for his wife's cheerless plight, encourages his cousin to befriend his wife as they both have so much in common (he loves poetry and the arts as well). Well, I won't go any further in relating the story line, but as most of you can guess...
I have read in several different articles that this was Ray's favorite film. That is quite a boast when you consider how many classic, award-winning films this man had been a part of. I just love this guy's directing! He was an artist who was able to evoke any emotion he wanted from his actors. There is typically not a whole lot of dialogue in his films, and he was definitely not one to use any effulgent effects, however I have never seen a director so adept in capturing the intimate feelings of his characters. Ergo, I would be remiss to not give kudos to the fine cast as well - Madhabi Mukherjee as Charlu, Soumitra Chatterjee as Amal, and Shailen Mukherjee as Bhupati. All three give standout performances, especially Madhabi as Charlu and it's no wonder why Ray loved having her as his lead actress for several other films.
There is no violence, foul language, nudity, crude humor, etc... in this 1964 classic. It's a charming story directed by one of the world's greatest story tellers - simple, yet stylish and sophisticated at the same time. I can't recommend it enough!
Music, love, literature !! If you often visit films of Satyajit Ray, you will recognize many of his actors. The women in Ray's films are generally beautiful, while the men are with memorable character in their face. The lead actress in Charulata was also in his Mahanagar (The Big City). And now she plays the beautiful Charu, ignored and lonely wife, who falls deeply for her assigned mentor, who is her brother-in-law.
What's unique about this love story is that there isn't the usual acknowledgement, no mutual confirmation of love, neither the display of affection. It's rather one-sided and it is the actress who skillfully must convey to the viewer those feelings. It is subtle but yet romantic.
Set in 19th century, and released in 1964, Charula (Lonely Wife) lives behind the walls of a grand luxurious place, viewing the outside world through her opera glasses, connecting only with servants, and her husband runs a political newspaper. He doesn't have much time for Charu, and in order to bring out her writing talent, he asks his brother to mentor her.
Charulata was filmed entirely on set, with great detail to the period and details began with the Victorian bed. A tedious process was the hanging of printed wallpaper pattern onto plywood. Satyajit Ray was a remarkable man, a short story writer, graphic designer, and a composer. His graphic design and musical composition talents were evident. Music, lyrics and writing play a major role in this film. The author referenced several times by Charu, Bankim, unknown to most in our world, was a prominent novelist of that era.
This is a lengthy film, at times slow moving, but the depth is the relationship of love without infidelity. This is said to be Satyajit Ray's favorite work. Satyajit is a remarkable man. Rizzo
Excellent Ray films: Try The Stranger and a wonderful black and white Jalsaghar - The Music Room (1958)
All the Right Choices A filmmaker has so many choices to make. What is the pace of the action? How is the scene framed? What is the best sequence of events? How is character condensed into its essence in a few brief moments of imagery? What do you do to build conflict and resolution? Satyajit Ray's Charulata has much to teach about all these questions.
This film is about a highly privileged group of people living in the late 19th century in Calcutta, and a marriage where a beautiful young wife, Charulata, sits bored and alone for weeks on end while her brilliant and preoccupied husband, Bhupati, tends to his other wife: his political newspaper. Bhupati is sensitive enough to understand his wife's frustration and asks his more emotional and romantic brother, Amol, a writer of sentimental romances, to tend to his wife and help her to write. Finally we see Charulata happy, singing, playful, and tending to Amol, mending his clothes and inspiring him to continue writing. Her innocent flirtations catch her offguard as she becomes deeply attached to Amol. Amol also realizes that his emotions are leading him astray. After Bhupati is ruined when his brother in law, whom he trusted and loved, makes off with the newspaper's money, Amol decides to leave, not wanting to take away from Bhupati his "other" wife. Charulata is crushed by Amol's departure and inadvertently betrays her emotions to Bhupati. Bhupati is completely disillusioned by these reversals of trust and love. Their marriage is severed. The final freeze frame is of the couple reaching out to hold each other's hand and is captioned, "The Ruined Nest."
This rather operatic plot opens slowly and quietly, but it becomes clear that a master is behind the lens as scene after scene move naturally into one another and the framing and pace draw the viewer into the emotion and drama of the story. Satyajit Ray's poetic, artistic, and literary sensibility fully enfolds and engages the viewer, and one realizes that all the right choices have been made. This movie is a master work, but in today's American film culture of fast action, cheap sentiment, and explicit sex, few people will realize it.
Similarities I hadn't the slightest inkling of this till I recently read Aruna Chakravarty's translation of Sunil Gangopadhyay's 'Pratham Alo' retitled 'First Light'. I had seen the movie Charulata before, but after having read Sunil's novel, I realized that Rabindranath's relationship with his own sister-in-law Kadambari, the wife of Jyotirindranath, was in fact quite similar to that of Amal and Charu in Ray's film. I was further reassured after reading an article in Parabas, in which Univeristy of Chicago's Dr. Clinton Seely commented the same. His own life must have influenced Tagore to write 'Nashta Neer', from which Ray adapted the simply superb Charulata.
Perfect Till I saw Jalsaghar, this was my favourite Ray movie. I have read the book (the translation). This is a film version that does not destroy the book. It is perfect in its storytelling, acting, visually, the music...all of it. Madhabi Mukherjee fits the role like a glove and so do the rest of the cast. I think Amal is infatuated with Charu but Charu's involvement is of course greater. Charu is highly intelligent and has a certain sensibility - on the other hand she would perhaps have been content with some attention from her husband and a child. So it is like a combination of circumstances that make Charu so emotionally dependent on Amal that it eventually destroys her as a person and irrevocably damages her relationship with her husband. I think the tale is really timeless even if women today have more freedom than Charu could ever imagine. The heart betrays us in the same way no matter what times we live in.
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