Mira Nair on Satyajit Ray’s Masterpiece DEVI | From Studio 9
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- čas přidán 19. 07. 2022
- DEVI, which Ray made after the Apu Trilogy (THE SONG OF THE LITTLE ROAD, THE UNVANQUISHED, and THE WORLD OF APU), is an aching tour de force. Based on Prabhat Kumar Mukherjee’s story, Devi’s core debate - faith vs. reason - makes it more complex than the trilogy while remaining rooted in a family drama. After teenage newlyweds Umaprasad Chowdhury (Soumitra Chatterjee) and Doyamoyee (Sharmila Tagore) are separated as Umaprasad goes away to study, Doyamoyee dutifully massages the feet of her feudal father-in-law (Chhabi Biswas). Soon, he dreams that his beautiful daughter-in-law is the Hindu goddess Kali incarnate, and begins worshipping her. Doyamoyee is terrified of being trapped as a goddess, but a father-son showdown melts after she revives a dying child and news of her “miracles” spread like wildfire. Umaprasad persuades her to run away with him, but she has doubts: what if she is the goddess and cured that child?
Cinematographer Subrata Mitra’s work is impeccable; as the couple returns home through tall grass, melancholia engulfs you, in contrast with Apu and Durga’s joyous race through the tall grass in The Song of the Little Road. Doyamoyee’s inability to cure another sick child results in a grand tragedy. Ray daringly addresses a variation of the Oedipus complex, where the father-in-law, in a sense, “obtains” his daughter-in-law for himself. Ray revisited the faith-vs.-reason argument in An Enemy of the People (1989). Sixty years after Devi screened in competition at Cannes, Ray’s warnings are terrifyingly prescient: patriarchy and faith can be a fatal combination; in today’s India, this combination has nearly drowned out all reason.
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#satyajitray #indiancinema - Krátké a kreslené filmy
Sir Satyajeet ray is the finest and master filmmaker. His works are the Stories about the cultural setup which holds a potential to understand the roots of authenticity. We have learnt so much from this master filmmaker and yet we feel his language of film was really strong and sane.
Not Satyajeet it is Satyajit
Swedish film Director Ingmer Bergman:s comment ' a grim serious film. The eyes of Devi (Sharmila) will remain in my memory
for long'.
❤ True ❤
💚
Sad to see that she didn't even mention about other legends like Soumitra Chatterjee and Chobi Biswas. Without their brilliant performance, this movie couldn't happen.
❤️
'Devi' film proves blind belief, orthodoxy can make a disaster 🤭
A family has been ruined due to Kalikinkar's blind religious belief.
This interpretation of "Devi" by this lady is a clear example of "If you are wearing red glasses,the world will become red for you"😅...If Satyajit Ray sir would listen it, either he would smile or get infuriated but certainly won't like it!! This lady equated orthodox beliefs with "beliefs in higher force or whatever you call it"..like really 😅..The classic case representing problems of ignorance.. Ignorance makes you pass sweeping statements..You might be an atheist because of your belief/ignorance, no big deal, problem is that you are putting your biased ideas into Ray's mouth... She said that relation in extended family looked incestuous in this film..."Incestuous"..Like really?? That's all you could interpret, if a blind believer started considering her daughter-in-law as her Mother Goddess Kali...Ray sir in the film was not at all questioning religion, belief, rituals anything in grand scheme of things as such..He had a simple warning/suggesion that dont let your belief overshadow your rationality, no matter how intelligent you really are, if your belief is making you blind towards your common sense/rationality, then disaster of highest order is at your gates!!! That's all he said...
u saw ganashatru?..read about it in google
Mira Nair has been indoctrinated by Western perspectives from a very young age, when she was in Brown uni or even before. She is the worst kind of Indian. And i say this as a liberal. Ray dealt with religious dogmatism, not religion per say. And he was not against Hinduism at all or any religion for that matter. But Mira has been only given a hammer that has been made by the whites to nail the brown skinned man. And she sadly sees a nail in every Hindu. Salaam Bombay was poverty porn at its best. I wish she could have been hauled back to India and shown as what she really is. An ignorant western puppet.
I don’t understand for sure what’s your problem with this interpretation.
Firstly, you got really perturbed by the word incestuous, obviously apprehending sexual connotations. But, I believe, she used it in its more general meaning of living in closed groups resistant to outside influence. This is very true for cult and even some traditional or religious families.
Secondly, Ofcourse Ray was critical of religion and ritual in this movie… as the ways of practicing it and the basis of the belief system, in general, goes against rationality.
This topic was close to him as he went back to it again later in his film ganashatru
@@soumavabasu2856 You are being very nuanced in defending her usage of word "incestuous"(very offensive, not a confortable word at all, even if being used to express the closeness) for an Indian family shown in the film. But not showing same nuance in your understanding of Indian families, culture and religions of India. What makes her and you think that the family shown in the film is living an incestuous way of living.The father is a well-educated person(he recites verses of Raghuvansham to prove it), younger son is living in Calcutta and learning English over there.Elder daughter-in-law is also protesting. Elder son is neutral. Only the father is extreme in his faith. Irony is, you yourself are an Indian and even in your family(just like any other Indian family), somebody would be extra religious and somebody would be extra liberal but everyone must be sharing a very close emotional connect with each other despite being very busy in their lives, which is precisely the case shown in the film. Now, if you are allowing her to describe such family as "incestuous" then I am afraid, all our Indian families would be termed so. The thing is, if you have been raised in an Indian family and you are not being nuanced in your understanding of religion, Indian traditions, faith and harmful rigid irrational beliefs, then something is wrong..Have you analysed Ray's mulit-layered deep nuanced personality? Do you really think that he was making such sweeping, generalised judgements on religion in the way this lady is making here? Though Ray was an athiest, but do you really think that he was critical of Durga Pujo of West Bengal? Film Devi opens with a scene of artists preparing beuatiful clay sculpture of Maa Durga for Pujo. Apu's Father in Pather Panchali is a simple priest. Ray really liked Varanasi, the epicenter of Hinduism, hence shot Aparajito and Feluda over there. It's not about religion and relious practices, it's about irrationality and rigidity. Both his films, Devi and Ganashatru, are only shouting out loud one thing that religion must allow a space of discussion and criticism if some beliefs are being harmful. That's it. This lady is using Ray and his films to justify her cynical views about religious character of India and Indian families, which I can't allow. Study of religion and its impact on India demand nuance.
@@sharadmishra5596 I am not being any more nuanced about the meaning of the word than what the dictionary says. Also, I find no problem with what she's saying; probably you are reading too much into it. You might have an idea stuck in your mind about the word and that's, unfortunately, your problem. Or, is this discomfort about the review because it did not try to strip Ray's work off its politics and its critical gaze on institutions we revere; unlike many Ray 'fans' do these days.
Ray was keen on understanding human relationships and values, but not necessarily admiring the "beauty" of religion. Rather, and especially in the movie Devi, Ray warns how religion has an extraordinary power to make otherwise sane people insane. That's a highly critical stand and would have likely created a lot of discomfort if made in the present time. If the idea of incarnation is challenged, like in the movie, some fundamental facets of our religious beliefs are already challenged.
Also, I really don't understand and can't take it seriously that Ray liking the city Varanasi means SOMETHING... He liked many other places like Darjeeling, Kolkata etc... Feluda and Aparajito were shot there as the stories were based there..... as simple as that.. haha.. you are reading too much into it maybe.