A collection of three stories originally written by Rabindranath Tagore, and adapted here by Satyajit Ray. I don't know if there was meant to be a common theme, but each portrays a girl's relationship to a young man and their primary desire in life. (I say 'girl' but in the middle story, the main character is a woman). One wants to learn from a father figure, another has a burning desire for riches, and the last has a fierce need for independence. Tension results when those desires are threatened. The stories are simply told which suits them well, and while the quality of the print that I saw wasn't the highest, the quality of the filmmaking is solid, blending solid cinematography and great music into stories that touch various emotions.
The Postmaster has a young man coming to a small village from Calcutta to take the job of a postmaster, and there befriending his servant, an orphan girl. In addition to all her chores she helps him deal with a local madman, as well as nurses him back to health when he contracts malaria. Meanwhile, he begins teaching her how to read and write Bengali. It's a story about the pain of separating from someone you've been touched by, echoed in the lyrics of the traditional music some of the old men play one night. Ray gives us a very nice scene when the young girl comes to the postmaster at night during his sickness, and he doesn't recognize her; the way it's shot, she almost seems otherworldly. It's the feeling of this one that delivers the biggest impact though, so touching, and so true to how things often go in life.
Monihara (Lost Jewels) is about a wife who covets jewelry above all else, and continually gets her husband to buy her a piece here or there. When his business suffers from a fire, she worries that he will need to take some of it back, and flees with the help of a cousin. The framing to the story has an author talking to a robed man who faces away from him and speaks as if he's disembodied, setting a ghostly tone, and throughout the film we get the feeling that there is something supernatural going on. For example, when the man approaches his wife from behind as she stares out the window of the mansion they've inherited, Ray moves the camera slowly to the sound of eerie music, a fantastic scene. I absolutely loved the soundtrack which Ray also scored. It's spooky and foreboding, and reflects the sickness of greed and this couple's broken relationship perfectly.
The wife (Kanika Majumdar) gets a chance to sing of longing and melancholy; she's a beautiful woman with a wonderful voice, and it's too bad her character is such a shallow person. We get the idea from the author that if her husband was more forceful, she would love and respect him more. "He didn't realize that in matters of the heart, it's brute force, not meek reticence which really works. A woman prefers the harsher things, like sour green mango and hot chilies," he tells us. While that's pretty direct, I liked how the narrative didn't explicitly inform us exactly what happens to her after she leaves, allowing the viewer to fill in the blanks. It's just a lovely, haunting little story.
The last story, Samapti (The Conclusion) has a young man returning home after his exams, only to have his mother begin pushing him to get married. She arranges things with the daughter of friends of the family, but the trouble is, he doesn't feel anything for her. Instead, he finds himself drawn to a young girl who runs around the village and gets up to various mischief, an independent free spirit who is so counter to the social convention that she's referred to as "Crazy Girl." Against his mother's wishes (and the girl's too) he arranges to marry her, not realizing that the thing that draws him to her is the very thing that will make having her settle down into the role of a wife so difficult. It's like putting a bird in a cage. I love the defiance of the girl (Aparna Sen) and the tension with her husband (Soumitra Chatterjee), though this one did seem to lag a bit, and the ending seemed a bit too cheery, perhaps to compensate for the other stories.
Overall, a good collection, and worth seeing.
