The Home and the World

Satyajit Ray's film is adapted from Rabindranath Tagore's novel of 1916. It is set in colonial East Bengal in the early 1900s. Nikhilesh, wealthy and Western-educated, wants to bring his wife Bimala out of the inner house and introduces her to his friend Sandip, an ardent advocate of the swadeshi movement against British goods. The question runs two ways. Bimala is drawn to Sandip's political fervour and to Sandip himself, but Ray builds this not as a love triangle but to show how nationalism becomes a personal desire. When Sandip's movement begins harming poor Muslim traders, the matter stops being abstract. Ray suffered a heart attack during the shoot and part of the film was directed by his son, Sandip Ray. Swatilekha Sengupta's Bimala is among the most debated of Ray's women characters. Who it's for: those interested in Ray and in the argument over nationalism in colonial India. Who it's not for: viewers wanting fast narrative; the film is built almost entirely on talk.