The Goddess

After watching Satyajit Ray's The Apu Trilogy (1955-1959), which are now my favourite films of all time, I was looking forward to watching Devi, the next film Ray directed after The Apu Trilogy. Although I couldn't feel the same kind of emotional connection with the characters in Devi that I felt in The Apu Trilogy, this film was thought-provoking and very intriguing to watch.

Devi dealt with a serious issue in Bengali society at the time in a mature manner and Ray's direction and cinematography for this film was just as superb as The Apu Trilogy. It starred Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore once again as a married couple, like in Apur Sansar (the final part of The Apu Trilogy). However, whereas it was Soumitra who played the lead role in Apur Sansar, this time it's Sharmila who plays the lead role in Devi. Her performance was very subtle for the first half but her delusional performance towards the end was very convincing. Overall, I'd highly recommend this movie to any Satyajit Ray fan.

8/10