Charulata — A Masterpiece of Bengali Cinema
In 1966, after the release of his twelfth feature film Charulata or The Lonely Wife, director Satyajit Ray wrote that he had chosen the field of “intimate cinema — the cinema of mood and atmosphere, rather than that of grandeur and spectacle.” In Charulata, Ray’s masterful use of camera and narrative style, combined with a minimal use of dialogue, has enabled him to film one of the most nuanced social critiques of the Bengali Renaissance in the early twentieth century. His examination of sexual and gendered tensions is grounded in the eyes of the protagonist Charu, a modern woman in colonial India who’s sense of curiosity and desire for knowledge slowly transforms her from an object of desire into a “desiring subject” capable of articulating her own needs and wishes.
Charulata, based on Rabindranath Tagore’s The Broken Nest, is set in Calcutta in the late nineteenth century when Western education had helped develop the bhadralok class, a unique and uncertain amalgamation of Western liberalism with traditional “Eastern” notions of the home and gender roles. The story revolves around Charu (Madhabi Mukherjee), the lonely and intelligent wife of Bhupati (Sailen Mukherjee), an editor and publisher of a political newspaper. Charu and Bhupati are both a part of the Bengali intellectual elite and are interested in the arts and literature. Though the married couple share a bond, Charu is evidently lonely and longs for companionship. Sensing this Bhupati encourages his cousin Amal to give his wife “guidance” and develop her writing skills. As the story unfolds an intimate relationship begins to develop between Amal and Charu but ultimately Amal is unable to reciprocate his romantic feelings due to the guilt involved in betraying his cousin Bhupati. After Amal leaves the couple to pursue his higher education in London, Bhupati is shocked when he sees his wife heartbroken by the departure of Amal. Charulata concludes in a moment of stasis with a freeze frame of Bhupati and Amal reaching out for each other but their hands never quite meet, reflecting a relationship that is just struggling to hang in the balance.
Ray’s use of minimal dialogue, thought-provoking motifs, and innovative camerawork is evident in the opening sequence of the film. The long segment begins with Charu walking idly in her large mansion searching for a way to pass her time by knitting, reading, and spying on the outside world from the boundaries of her lavish drawing room. Ray makes use of tracking shots and zoom effects to emphasize the wealth and luxury in her surrounding as well as make it seem that Charu is desperate for some movement within the trapped inner sanctum of her family home (00:04:15).
This filming technique is then punctuated with close up shots through opera glasses. Here the viewer is witness to how Charu’s point of view through opera glasses is limited in scope and how her spatial confinement makes the otherwise banal outside world seem full of life and movement (00:06:16).
Charu moves almost like the birds in the elaborate cage in her home’s hallway, from one window to another she desperately tries to watch passer-by’s doing seemingly mundane things. As the scene concludes Charu’s gaze moves from the external to the internal as she sees her husband, Bhupati, walk past her without acknowledging her presence in the family hallway. Ray’s strategic use of the opera glasses in this scene at 00:10:11 seems like a continuation of the previous scene. No matter how physically close Bhupati might seem to Charu, it is evident that he too belongs to the external world. Ray uses the ten minutes of this opening scene with very little dialogue to establishes the confines of the home and the foundation of Bhupati and Charu’s emotionally distant relationship.
Another well-constructed sequence in the film worthy of mention is the swing scene in which Charu comes to the unexpected realization of her latent attraction toward Amal. At 00:42:00 the eyes of the viewer are stuck on Charu, singing while she sits on the swing that moves back and forth. We then see Charu’s point of view, crooked and oscillating with the swing, as she looks at Amal while simultaneously singing Tagore’s “Phule Phule Dhole Dhole”, “the cuckoo moves from bower to bower, cuckoo, cuckoo, she cries, deep within my head is yearning…alas…alas.”
It is symbolic that the opera glasses also feature in this scene when Charu looks at a mother caring for her child within another home (00:46:30). What distinguishes this scene from the previous scene using the opera glasses in the drawing room is that now Charu is sitting outside looking in. Not coincidentally, this is the moment when Charu has the sudden awareness of her feelings toward Amal. At 00:46:40, Satyajit Ray strategically uses Madhabi Mukherjee’s gaze and an array of facial expression to denote complex and subtle changes in Charu’s emotions towards Amal. At 00:47:10 Charu gives the viewer just a slight hint of a smile that slowly transforms into shock over the realization that her love has been able to take her by surprise. Finally, Ray’s interesting use of the movement of the swing trapped between two points on a tree and the sense of dizziness accompanied with it mirrors Charu’s state of mind as it deals with this new dilemma and hesitation moving forward.
Such a nuanced depiction of the complex nature of familial relationships in the Bengali Renaissance would not have been possible without Satyajit Ray’s clever filmmaking techniques and handling of delicate subject matter. The incredible success of Charulata is not surprising as the film had the power to relate to audiences both across India and overseas.
