THE INNER EYE, SIKKIM, BALA, TWO: FOUR SHORTS BY SATYAJIT RAY - Review By Greg Klymkiw #TiffBellLightbox

Don't miss a single one of these great films on display at TIFF Bell Lightbox in the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". From visionary programmer James Quandt, this is one of the most important retrospectives ever presented in Canada. If you care about cinema, you can't afford to miss even one. Heed the warning below!!! The Film Corner & Mr. Neeson mean business!!!

Few directors looked as cool as Satyajit Ray
when he had a cigarette dangling from his lips.

Sikkim (1972) Dir. Satyajit Ray 52mins. *****
Review By Greg Klymkiw

This exquisite portrait of life in the Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim was banned for many years in India and only recently has been revived and lovingly restored in 35mm. If all geographic documentaries were as intelligent, tasteful and compelling as this I'd be glued to whatever specialty channel was broadcasting them for hours, days, weeks, months, if not years on end. Thank God, for my life and general well being, that only Sikkim exists and towers well above the best of this genre of film. It has a simple, but effective structure - we're introduced to the kingdom, delivered a punchy informative history, follow the activities of its inhabitants, get to meet the royal family and finally follow a massive cultural festival in its glory. Ray, in his great dramas surely rivalled Ingmar Bergman in terms of capturing the indelible landscapes of the human face. Here, in this documentary, he continues the tradition. The film's gorgeously shot, beautifully written and expertly narrated by Ray himself. This is not only filmmaking at its finest, but an important slice of a time and place that now remains etched upon celluloid forever.

The Inner Eye (1972)
Dir. Satyajit Ray 20mins. ****

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This is probably one of the best, if not the best documentary portrait of a visual artist I've ever seen.

Ray focuses on the great Indian visual artist Binod Behari Mukherjee (with whom Ray studied). Ray again writes gorgeous narration, delivers it beautifully and captures the essence of this astounding treasure of Indian art by ultimately letting the man and the work speak for itself.

Ray delivers a deft series of biographical details, captures the artist's philosophies on art and life and maybe inadvertently opens a window upon Ray's great visual work as a filmmaker by the manner in which he presents Mukherjee's art.

Of course, the most extraordinary aspect of this tale is that the Master himself eventually went blind, but tapped into his "inner eye" to keep creating stunning work in spite of his handicap.

A truly beautiful and inspirational experience and Ray captures it in only 20 minutes. It's 20 minutes wherein life seems to stand still and we get a glimpse into one of fine art's great geniuses.

Bala (1976) Dir. Satyajit Ray 29mins. ***1/2
Review By Greg Klymkiw

Balasaraswati (known by her more popular diminutive stage name Bala) was already in her 60s when this documentary portrait of her was made. This prima ballerina who specialized in the art of the Bharatanatyam dance had continued to practice her art. Using a wealth of archival materials, Ray delivers the fascinating biographical details of her life, renders aspects of her contemporary life and frames everything within the context of two full dances. Ray captures her dancing simply and beautifully - once in the studio, and again out against a stunning natural backdrop. He keeps a mostly fixed position and only moves his camera with her movement. The dances themselves are so spectacular that one interview subject talks about how Bala's dance had the legendary Martha Graham shuddering and weeping with astonishment. Ray's indelible portrait is such that we do not doubt this for a second.

Two (1964) Dir. Satyajit Ray 15mins. ****
Review By Greg Klymkiw

This simple, beautifully shot (in gorgeous black and white) fable of haves and have-nots is as delightfully entertaining as it is deeply and profoundly moving. Ray tells his tale with no dialogue whatsoever. A little rich boy on the second floor of his family's home plays alone with his huge collection of expensive toys. At one point, he looks outside the window and sees a poverty-stricken youth also playing by himself. The two lads make a connection, but soon the rich boy is demonstrating all his wonderful toys in a gloatingly uncharitable manner. The film turns into a rivalry between two children on the extreme opposites of social strata. Where it ends up, finally, is a heartbreaker. Such is the art of Maestro Satyajit Ray.

The Inner Eye: Four Shorts (THE INNER EYE, SIKKIM, BALA, TWO) By Satyajit Ray is presented at TIFF Bell Lightbox on Tuesday, July 15, 2014 at 8:45 p.m. as part of the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". NOTE: Sikkim IS A RESTORED 35MM FILM PRINT & Two IS A RESTORED 16MM FILM PRINT. This might be your only chance to see this masterpiece the way it was meant to be seen, so get your tickets NOW and GO. Visit the TIFF website for further details by clicking HERE.

DON'T FORGET TO BUY YOUR SATYAJIT RAY MOVIES FROM THE LINKS TO AMAZON.CA, AMAZON.COM and AMAZON.UK, BELOW. DOING SO WILL ASSIST WITH THE ONGOING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER.

*BUYERS PLEASE NOTE* Amazon.ca (Canadian Amazon) has a relatively cruddy collection of Satyajit Ray product and generally shitty prices. Amazon.com has a huge selection of materials (including music and books) and decent prices. Amazon.UK has a GREAT selection of Satyajit Ray movies from a very cool company called Artificial Eye (second these days only to the Criterion Collection). Any decent Chinatown sells region-free Blu-Ray and DVD players for peanuts. Just get one (or several - they can be that cheap) and don't be afraid of ordering from foreign regions. The fucking film companies should just merge the formats into one acceptable delivery method worldwide. Besides, you can order anything you want from any country anyway.

AMAZON.CA:

AMAZON.COM:



AMAZON.UK:

THE BIG CITY (MAHANAGAR) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Newly RESTORED 35mm FILM PRINT during The Films of Satyajit Ray @ TIFF Bell Lightbox #tiffcinematheque AND in the STUNNING BRD & DVD from the visionary home entertainment label the CRITERION COLLECTION!!! See it on the BIG SCREEN, then BUY it to OWN FOREVER!!!

Don't miss a single one of these great films on display at TIFF Bell Lightbox in the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". From visionary programmer James Quandt, this is one of the most important retrospectives ever presented in Canada. If you care about cinema, you can't afford to miss even one. Heed the warning below!!! The Film Corner & Mr. Neeson mean business!!!

THE BIG CITY (MAHANAGAR) - RESTORED
35mm FILM PRINT @ #TiffBellLightbox
and on gorgeous BLU-RAY and DVD
from THE CRITERION COLLECTION!!!

Anil Chatterjee dolls up in Satyajit Ray's The Big City.
Directors who made art films in the 50s, 60s and 70s
understood that they had to cast:

GREAT ACTRESSES
who were also
MAJOR LEAGUE BABES!!!

Gorgeous new cover art by Marian Bantjes
for the extras-laden Criterion Blu-Ray.

The Big City [Mahanagar] (1963) *****
Dir. Satyajit Ray
Starring: Madhabi Mukherjee, Anil Chatterjee,
Jaya Bhaduri, Haren Chatterjee, Sefalika Devi,
Prasenjit Sarkar, Haradhan Banerjee, Vicky Redwood

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The Big City [Mahanagar] is such a great picture that even though it suffers somewhat from a rushed, unearned ending, its joys and virtues are many. Satyajit Ray delivers yet another masterpiece for the ages. This lovely amalgam of family drama and love story is once again another example of just how ahead of his time Ray was. The central character is female and she drives the entire engine of the story. Arati (Madhabi Mukherjee) is a young, hard-working housewife who toils with a face of happiness and tries to reserve any expressions of concern to herself. Though her husband Subrata (Anil Chatterjee) has a decent lower middle class job in the city as a loans officer at a bank, his financial obligations are almost ruinous. Not only is his salary supporting a wife, but also their little boy Pintu (Prasenjit Sarkar), Arati's still unmarried teenage sister and student Bani (Jaya Bhaduri), his father Priyogopal (Haren Chatterjee) and mother Sarojini (Sefalika Devi).

The family lives paycheque to paycheque and Arati is occasionally forced to borrow certain staples from the neighbours. Priyogopal is a former school teacher, now old, infirm and needing new prescription lenses so he can properly see his crossword puzzles. Bani feels guilt about going to school when she should be bringing in income (especially when she's chided that she won't need an education since she's a woman and will inevitably get married). Sarojini even feels like she and her husband are milestones around the neck of this young family. The pressures of poverty are considerable which, of course, brings considerable shame to Subrata.

Things take a positive turn when husband and wife decide that an extra income is needed and well within their grasp. After all, there are plenty of people to run the household, so it's not as if Arati can't take on another job.

Here the film springs into a joyous mode as Arati, for the first time in her life, leaves the confines of home and hearth to work as a door-to-door saleslady, hawking knitting machines along with a team of young woman. Arati discovers a new found independence, but in so doing, realizes she has a great gift for sales and it doesn't take long for her to earn a promotion as the head of the whole team. The money she starts bringing into the household is considerable.

Madhabi Mukherjee is such a stirring, stunning, sexy presence in this film. It's no wonder she was one of India's biggest and brightest stars, as well as being a favourite of Ray's (she starred in his wonderful Charulata). Her role demands wearing a variety of masks - some tried and true, but others all new. Mukherjee handles Arati's blossoming with steadily mounting subtlety and it's also no wonder her role was so appealing to her as an actress. Women, were so often second fiddles in Indian cinema, but not in Satyajit Ray's films and especially not in Mahanagar.

All is not sweetness, light and empowerment. Ray deftly handles the new burdens facing both Arati and her family. Her child misses her, Arati feels even more ashamed at how well his wife is doing in the business world and his father is appalled that his son would be such a weak man that he'd allow his wife to work. For his part, Priyogopal has always had a chip on his shoulder about slaving for years as a schoolteacher and now, in his august years, lives with no pension and under his son's roof. He's proud that all his former students went on to become such successful and rich professional men, but he also feels they owe him something, so he begins a campaign to track them all down and essentially beg money from them - money he feels they owe him.

On the work front, Arati is also faced with a huge challenge. Though her boss clearly values her, she's not too impressed with how he's been prejudicially treating one of the employees, an Anglo-Indian woman who is not only her friend, but the constant butt of the boss's disdain. Arati has some big decisions to make and one of them involves taking a huge stand against the injustices perpetrated by her boss.

The film is so stirring, funny, touching and tender that after having seen it a few times now, I'm still disappointed with the manner in which it resolves all of the conflicts so quickly. Ray has been so careful to take his time wending his way through the tale and yet in the most crucial moments, the storytelling seems to falter. What transpires makes complete narrative sense, but how he gets us there seems too pat and unearned.

And you know what? It doesn't matter. The movie is otherwise infused with such greatness that it still has stood the test of time as yet another Satyajit Ray masterpiece. He really was one of the best filmmakers of all time. We're so blessed he was able to make the films he wanted his way in an industry that was never too open to the kind of contemporary realities facing India that Ray explored so often and so well.

Mahanagar (The Big City) is presented at TIFF Bell Lightbox on July 12, 2014 at 3:45pm as part of the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". NOTE: THIS IS A RESTORED 35MM. This might be your only chance to see this masterpiece the way it was meant to be seen, so get your tickets NOW and GO. Visit the TIFF website for further details by clicking HERE.

After you've seen this on a big screen, you'll absolutely kill to own the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray. This is a film to cherish and Criterion has pulled out all the stops with the supplements. In addition to the all-new restored 2K digital film transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack, the disc includes a brand new interview with Madhabi Mukherjee, a terrific short doc/interview with Suranjan Ganguly entitled Satyajit Ray and the Modern Woman, The Coward, a wonderful 1965 short feature by Ray about modern female identity starring Mukherjee and Soumitra Chatterjee, B.D. Darga's excellent 1974 short documentary Satyajit Ray, great English subtitles newly translated and the de rigour Criterion booklet that has an essay by scholar Chandak Sengoopta and a 1980s interview with Ray by the inimitable Andrew Robinson.

PIKOO (Pikoor Diary) & SADGATI ( The Deliverance) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Two Short Mid-Length Television Films by Satyajit Ray - The Films of Satyajit Ray @ TIFF Bell Lightbox #tiffcinematheque

Don't miss a single one of these great films on display at TIFF Bell Lightbox in the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". From visionary programmer James Quandt, this is one of the most important retrospectives ever presented in Canada. If you care about cinema, you can't afford to miss even one. Heed the warning below!!! The Film Corner & Mr. Neeson mean business!!!

The evil of castes in Sadgati (above),
the tragedy of infidelity in Pikoo (below).
Satyajit Ray used the medium of idiocy to transmit
work that tackled important themes that genuinely affected
and continue to affect the lives of people all over the world.

Two Short
Television Films
By Satyajit Ray

Pikoo [Pikoor Diary] (1980) *****
Dir. Satyajit Ray
Starring: Arjun Guha Thakurta, Aparna Sen, Promod Ganguli, Victor Banerjee, Soven Lahiri

Sadgati [Deliverance] (1981) *****
Dir. Satyajit Ray
Starring: Om Puri, Mohan Agashe, Gita Siddharth, Smita Patil, Richa Mishra

Review By
Greg Klymkiw

Prepare to be devastated. Satyajit Ray's in the house. Two short films he made for television during the 1980s and in glorious colour, no less (juxtaposing the lush, stunning compositions with the dark subject matter), are movies that pack enormous wallops from within their slender running times, a mere 28 minutes for Pikoo and a slightly longer mid-length running time at 52 minutes for Sadgati.

We're talking 80 minutes to be completely drained by Ray's staggering portraits of infidelity and India's foul, backwards caste system respectively. Both movies offer far more food for thought and dramatic punch than the vast majority of films made back then. As for now, most films do little more than offer ephemeral frissons for audiences too indoctrinated to realize they've being force-fed buckets of faecal matter by cash-grubbing, cynical nest-featherers. These two films are both monumental achievements and stand as a testament to their filmmaker, but also the visionary broadcasters who allowed Ray to make these stunning, short one-off dramas. There are certainly few, if any, contemporary broadcasters who'd allow this now and chances are, none of them know who Satyajit Ray was anyway and worse, wouldn't know great filmmaking even if it was represented by some meaty schwance slapping them in the face through a glory hole with a little sign dangling from said appendage that specifically indicated the content of the communion host they were about to receive down their greedy gullets.

Pikoo creates a slice of life in the acrimonious existence of an affluent family which results in a tragic event that should have been avoided, but given the social conditions a patriarchal society creates, it almost seems inevitable. Much of this tale is recounted through the eyes of a little boy, the title character. His love for his Mother and Grandfather are passionate and intense, though his feelings for his father seem almost non-existent. Ray provides a hint in the film's opening that the patriarch of this household is an uncommunicative, absent prig who spends more time preparing himself for a day at work than bothering to even acknowledge his sweet little boy. All poor Pikoo can get is a half-hearted wave from his Dad as the distracted breadwinner drives off to work.

Pikoo's mother affords the boy with love and attention, but even she is distracted. Firstly, she's more than a tad preoccupied by learning that her husband is aware of her infidelity. Strangely and just a bit selfishly, and in spite of the fact that she and her husband have argued all night (which we find out when Pikoo confides this to his ailing grandfather), the lonely Jezebel spends far too much time fretting that her lover (described to Pikoo as an interior decorator who must be addressed as "Uncle") will carve out time from his day to come over and deliver the vigorous poking she requires.

The story unravels with canny simplicity and leads to a horrendous moment of reckoning that affects everyone, but especially the innocent party in this whole sordid affair - a sweet little boy who is far too young to be aware of the sickening reality of his family's domestic strife and worst of all, having to make a discovery that will haunt him forever.

If Pikoo isn't enough to drag you through hot coals, Sadgati (aka Deliverance) will pretty much stuff you screaming into the flames dancing ever-so menacingly in a wood-burning stove. A tanner wishes to receive a blessing and advice on the most auspicious day to hold his daughter's wedding. The local Panditji (Hindu Brahmin Priest) is more than willing to oblige, but as the tanner is of the lowest social strata, our Man o' God cavalierly demands the father-in-law-to-be perform the most menial, back-breaking physical labour.

What occurs is one of the most harrowing and savage indictments of India's caste system imaginable. The Holy Man regards the Tanner with such contempt that his demands are tantamount to torture. He knows the poor guy recently suffered from a debilitating fever, yet he forces him to chop wood from a petrified log using only a dull, rusty axe. The task is impossible, but the Paditji takes an almost sadistic pleasure in both humiliating the man and forcing him to carry out the physically draining work in the hot sun, without food, drink or adequate rest. As the tanner goes about the business of sheer futility, the Panditji takes naps. Between naps, he barks out orders and insults.

The result of this act of psychopathic abuse is cruel and pointless. The aftermath is even more sickening. Ray uses colour in this film to its fullest juxtapositional effect. You will, I guarantee you, never forget the gorgeous sunset upon the rich dark countryside as a man's rotting corpse is dragged through the mud and unceremoniously dumped with utter disdain.

Pikoo and Sadgati are, once again, two more masterworks from Satyajit Ray. Whether he delivered feature drama, short works of fiction and even occasional documentary portraits, there are few filmmakers who have (or ever will) achieve the long string of greatness he delivered.

Pikoo & Sadgati are presented together at TIFF Bell Lightbox on July 11, 2014 at 9:30pm as part of the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". This might be your only chance to see this masterpiece the way it was meant to be seen, so get your tickets NOW and GO. Visit the TIFF website for further details by clicking HERE.

DON'T FORGET TO BUY YOUR SATYAJIT RAY MOVIES FROM THE LINKS TO AMAZON.CA, AMAZON.COM and AMAZON.UK, BELOW. DOING SO WILL ASSIST WITH THE ONGOING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER.

*BUYERS PLEASE NOTE* Amazon.ca (Canadian Amazon) has a relatively cruddy collection of Satyajit Ray product and generally shitty prices. Amazon.com has a huge selection of materials (including music and books) and decent prices. Amazon.UK has a GREAT selection of Satyajit Ray movies from a very cool company called Artificial Eye (second these days only to the Criterion Collection). Any decent Chinatown sells region-free Blu-Ray and DVD players for peanuts. Just get one (or several - they can be that cheap) and don't be afraid of ordering from foreign regions. The fucking film companies should just merge the formats into one acceptable delivery method worldwide. Besides, you can order anything you want from any country anyway.

AMAZON.CA:

AMAZON.COM:



AMAZON.UK:

CHARULATA (The Lonely Wife) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The Films of Satyajit Ray @ TIFF Bell Lightbox #tiffcinematheque - See it on the BIG SCREEN then BUY the stunning Criterion Collection BLU-RAY 2-OWN-4-EVER!

Don't miss a single one of these great films on display at TIFF Bell Lightbox in the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". From visionary programmer James Quandt, this is one of the most important retrospectives ever presented in Canada. If you care about cinema, you can't afford to miss even one. Heed the warning below!!! The Film Corner & Mr. Neeson mean business!!!

Madhabi Mukherjee as Charulata:
Seeing the world through opera glasses.

…and don't forget to order
the stunning Criterion Collection
Blu-Ray of Charulata.

Illustration by Satyajit Ray himself

Charulata (1964) Dir. Satyajit Ray *****
Starring: Madhabi Mukherjee,
Sailen Mukherjee, Soumitra Chatterjee, Syamal Ghosal, Gitali Roy

There are many extraordinary things about Satyajit Ray's great melodrama Charulata, but first and foremost is the grey zone he so delicately explores in this adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore's short story "Nastanirh" (The Broken Nest). If anything, it's these shadings which contribute the most to the romantic and tragic elements of this deeply moving love triangle and Ray's touch here has never been more expertly applied with respect to this perspective. Collaborating with his favourite cinematographer Subrata Mitra and the superlative editor Dulal Dutta, Ray plays out the vast majority of the action within the expanse of a highly upscale Calcutta home, alternating between the vast, gorgeous emptiness of the setting and the emotional claustrophobia which infuses the space through the eyes of the film's title character (played by the babe-o-licious Madhabi Mukherjee). It is through the lenses of an ornate pair of opera glasses that Charu gets glimpses of the world outside the coldly beautiful interiors so expertly designed by art director Bansi Chandragupta.

In the late 19th century, India is still under British rule, but in Calcutta the Bengali culture is taking further steps to assert itself in spite of the colonial yoke and Bhupati (Sailen Mukherjee) uses his upper class status to not roll over and feather his own nest, but to assert the notion of freedom. He does this by running a political newspaper from a corner of his palatial home and in spite of his friends and associates expressing concern that Bhupati could get into trouble with the authorities, he shrugs this off and maintains his belief that free speech is a paramount tenet of Britain and that he's doing nothing wrong. In a sense, he's right about this but his newspaper continues to suffer from low circulation and minimal ad revenue which keeps his attention too strongly upon business rather than his passion and vision to guide the paper creatively.

Bhupati is an honest, educated and intelligent man. He also prides himself upon being an extremely liberal and forward thinking member of his class. You would think this would make him a perfect husband for beautiful Charu. Her interest in the arts and culture, as well as her intelligence and literacy, is not at all lost on Bhupati and is the thing that makes him love her desperately. He's so enamoured with her brains (and considerable beauty), that he even encourages her to express herself artistically as a writer. Given the usual domestic patriarchy Ray has often explored in his films, this truly sounds like a marriage made in Heaven.

Here, however, are those damnable shades of grey. Bhupati is so obsessed with his newspaper that he seldom has time to be a friend, lover and equal life partner to the smart, sensitive Charu. More out of boredom, rather than anything else, she consumes herself with the deathly dull management of the household and apart from her occasional readings, she lives an incredibly lonely life, often spying activities in the outside world through her opera glasses.

Even this is not lost upon Bhupati. Within the context of an ages-old patriarchal culture, this sensitivity to her needs makes him a more-than-deserving recipient of canonization. Bhupati hits upon an amazing win-win (or so he thinks) situation. First of all, he summons Charu's big brother Umapada (Syamal Ghosal) and his wifey Manda (Gitali Roy) to come and live as family under their roof. Umapada has been looking for a good job and Bhupati puts his brother-in-law in charge of the day-to-day business operations of the paper. So far, so good. He assumes Manda will be excellent company for Charu. Wrong-O, Bhupati. Just because Manda is a woman and Charu is a woman, doesn't mean they're going to be good friends. As liberal as our want-to-be newspaper magnate is, he still carries the kind of patriarchal assumptions that offer no help at all. Manda is a catty, cheap and vulgar young lady with no interest in much of anything save for lolling about and/or playing stupid card games.

Luckily, Bhupati has also extended an open invitation to his young, educated, intelligent and sensitive cousin Amal (Soumitra Chatterjee). He encourages Amal to spend time with Charu and coax her to work on her writing. This sounds pretty win-win, but goddamn those shades of grey. Amal and Charu are matched perfectly on both artistic and intellectual levels and they spend virtually every waking hour together discussing art, philosophy, literature and writing. They even undertake to write creatively on their own work and critique it for each other.

Seeing two young people fall in love because they're both smart and attracted to their respective minds is pretty damn sexy. Ray handles this courtship as slowly and carefully as it plays out. Every gaze, gesture and nuance has weight, but they're all exclamatory points on the creative and intellectual intercourse between the two. That said, it doesn't hurt that Charu is a babe and that Amal is a young, studly dreamboat. Good looks, however, are genuinely secondary, as is sexual magnetism - these things blossom from the mind melding. Besides, if looks played into it, Sailen Mukherjee as Buphati is no slouch in the looks department either.

Disaster and betrayal loom, of course, but they come with the force of a hurricane as one (for the audience) is from an expected source and - at least initially - the other is wholly unexpected (though in retrospect, not a surprise). While the film ultimately leads us to a place of redemption and forgiveness, once we get there, Ray doesn't cop out. As in life, he takes us to the precipice, but refuses to placate us or his characters. Instead, he piles on the chill of a freeze.

And make no mistake. This is Satyajit Ray we're talking about here. It's a deep, deep freeze.

And it's devastating.

Charulata is presented at TIFF Bell Lightbox as part of the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". This might be your only chance to see this masterpiece the way it was meant to be seen, so get your tickets NOW and GO. Visit the TIFF website for further details by clicking HERE.

See it on the big screen, then be sure to buy the outstanding Criterion Collection edition via the various Amazon links below. The Criterion Blu-Ray of Charulata is another treasure trove of delights that make the disc a must-buy and mega-keeper. Included is the stunning all-new restoration in a 2K digital film transfer, with my ever-favourite uncompressed monaural soundtrack. All new mini-docs featuring interviews with actors Madhabi Mukherjee and Soumitra Chatterjee, Indian film scholar Moinak Biswas and Bengali cultural historian Supriya Chaudhuri are detailed and full of valuable supplementary insights. I always love Gideon Backmann audio interviews and Criterion includes a doozy with Ray himself. The new English subtitle translation is a marvel and definitely a step forward from the already fine translation in the 1990s Merchant Ivory Foundation restoration. The lovely booklet includes an excellent essay by Philip Kemp and a truly astounding interview with Ray by the inimitable Andrew Robinson.