The Branches of the Tree

A wealthy head of a family falls ill on his seventieth birthday. His three sons in Calcutta come home at once. A fourth son already lives with the old man; his mind is not sound. That gathering, spent waiting, brings the tensions inside the family into the open. The father’s moral rigidity, the business ambition of two sons and the withdrawal of the others all stand side by side. The film builds no events; it shows what collects in a room. How honesty fails to pass from one generation to the next sits at the centre of the story. The hundred and thirty minutes are compressed into a few days. Ajit Banerjee and Soumitra Chatterjee appear in Satyajit Ray’s film, a coproduction of Britain, India and France, completed in 1990.