Director : Satyajit Ray
Writers : Tarashankar Banerjee (based on the story by) (as Tarashankar Bandhopadhaya) , Satyajit Ray (script) .
Stars : Chhabi Biswas, Sardar Akhtar, Gangapada Basu |
Storyline :
Huzur Biswamghar Roy is a rich landowner who lives in a palace with his wife and son and his many servants. His passion - his wife would call it his addiction - is music and he spends a great deal of his fortune on concerts held for the locals in his magnificent music room. His wealth is in decline however. His lands are being eroded by the local river and he pays for the concert he arranges for his son's coming of age party by selling some of the family jewels. When his neighbor Ganguli invites him to a party at his house, Roy decides to one up him and organizes a lavish party for the same day - costing him the last of the jewels. After his wife and son are killed in a storm, Roy becomes something of a recluse, closing up the music room. Now, many years later he decides to have one final concert, spending the last of his money to again outdo - and spite - Ganguli.The Music Room Movie Reviews :
Good heavens! This is
about as far from Bollywood movies (cheesy musicals) as one could get.
Jalsaghar is a poignant rendering of social transition at the personal
level -- the indigent aristocrat whose delusive and self-destructive
obsession with bringing his music room back to life shields him from the
reality of his family's economic and social collapse, and indeed
hastens it; the showy nouveau-riche neighbor who embodies the rise of a
new social order based on economic achievement rather than aristocratic
roots and inherited wealth. There are parallels to Chekhov and Faulkner
(Snopeses and Sartorises). The black and white images (the white horse!)
are stunning. I saw this film in the 1980s, and remember it more
clearly than the movie I saw last night. It is truly a classic.
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