Word: charulata
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Dates: during 1965-1965
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Satyajit Ray, the Indian director who made the Apu trilogy about a poor village youth who migrates to a city, has shifted in Charulata to a study of the upper classes. Ray's camera roams with almost tactile pleasure over the sets of delicately embroidered furniture, wide leafy gardens, and other richly-patterned items of the Indian aristocracy...
...Charulata and Bhupati are a childless couple, entering their thirties in Calcutta of the 1880's. Offspring carry special importance in the Indian tradition, and Bhupati attempts to drown his frustration in overdevotion to a liberal newspaper he has founded. Charulata would like to write poetry, but is prevented by the constrictions placed on women in Indian society...
Their marriage trembles when Charulata falls in love with Bhupati's poet brother, as a refuge from her barrenness. At the end, however, the husband and wife manage to find love within the conventions of marriage, by accepting not their fate but each other. In Charulata Ray is reiterating a long-standing theme--that no circumstances are too dire to preclude happiness. The director's constant optimism becomes especially impressive in the context of modern India...