Satyajit Ray's chamber piece about the stirrings of feminism and nationalism in colonial India. Victor Banerjee of A Passage to India is the wealthy, Westernized maharajah, with liberal and rational attitudes. (And very good in the role, too.) Opposed to the notion of purdah, or the seclusion of women in the Hindu home, he pushes his wife into contact with his old college chum, a rabble-rousing radical and a bit of a lady-killer to boot. The consequences of this encounter are full of meaning, but not of complexity. The getting-there is leisurely and deliberate, even poky and halting. Stylistic infelicities -- the occasional awkward camera placement, the short crude zoom shot where a dolly would do better -- do not make the excursion any easier. With Swatilekha Chatterjee and Soumitra Chatterjee. (1985) — Duncan Shepherd
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