The Adversary

Satyajit Ray's 1970 Bengali film is the first part of his Calcutta trilogy. Forced to give up his medical studies when his father dies, Siddhartha moves from job interview to job interview; his sister works, his younger brother is in the revolutionary movement, and he stands somewhere between the two. Ray departs here from his own classical manner: negative images, sudden handheld camera, fragments of thought running in voice-over. That formal harshness answers the tension of Calcutta at the time. The most cited scene is the famous question at an interview about the most important event of the last decade. Siddhartha's answer sums up the film's political position by itself. Who it's for: viewers interested in Satyajit Ray and Indian political cinema after the sixties. Who it's not for: anyone expecting Ray's more lyrical films, or who dislikes ambiguous endings.