Satyajit Ray had originally intended his fourth movie to be something a little more accessible than what resulted.
After the relative failure of his previous film, Aparajito (1956), he had an idea for a hit that sounds pretty solid: Take a popular short story (by Tarashankar Bandopadhyay, about an aging aristocrat who recedes from the world into his own love of music), and drape it on the movie-musical genre, forever popular in India.
What he arrived at was The Music Room, a rough-edged drama that, although it didn't initially succeed as he'd hoped, is quietly revolutionary in the way it turns the movie-musical tradition inside-out.
If you've been following Film Streams' continuing “Bollywood and Beyond” series, this one definitely fits into the latter category. First for geographical reasons, since it’s from Bengal in eastern India which, at least at the time, was somewhat isolated from the Bollywood industry. But also because it isn't so much a musical as it is a movie in dialogue with music, a mournful story about loss and decay, punctuated by and interacting with musical sequences of enormous vitality.
Chhabi Biswas plays Biswambhar Roy, our central wealthy landowner in 1930s Bengal, whose story we learn mostly in flashback. Wasting away on the terrace of his deteriorating palace, Roy impotently reflects on the loss of his family and wealth, and the concerts he hosted in years past for his fellow elite, events that were equal parts cultural edification and solicitations for respect.
Three long concert scenes break up his story, all featuring classical Hindustani music composed of tirelessly unfolding ragas, or modes composed of a single melodic phrase. I can't fairly claim any more knowledge of the stuff than that, but it demands comment in as much as I doubt there's any middle ground on it among westerners, especially within the context of this film.
This frenetic, hypnotic music is either exhilarating or irritating, depending on your ears (the lady sitting behind me, for example: not into it), but the energy is undeniable. It's as if the color and physicality of a 1950s MGM musical was all here, but in concentrated form, packed densely into each raga.
These sequences are triumphs of mood and visual simplicity (Ray easily turns a chandelier, a spider and a mirror into huge images), but the music does a lot of the heavy lifting, too. Roy's guests cover the floor of the cavernous music room and revel in the cloud of sitars and and santoors, thumping tabla drums, otherworldly voices and hookah smoke. The music builds and persists with dizzying violence, right to the edge of chaos. The visitors remain rapt, tranquil; there's a really eerie kind of decadence going on here.
By never stopping too long on the characters at Roy's periphery, figures that always seem to be swarming in and intruding on his ethereal bubble like a bunch of flies, Ray sets up a mysterious dialogue between his protagonist and the music itself. The last two concerts — tours-de-force performed by singer Salamat Ali Khan and dancer Roshan Kumari respectively — each have a moment or two where they seem to have really gone off the rails. Both performances apparently communicate something grave to Roy, and shove him stumbling forward towards fate, confused and against his own will and self-satisfaction.
So yeah, it’s a little bit darker than Meet Me in Saint Louis.
The final screening of The Music Room is tonight at 7:15 at Film Streams, 1340 Mike Fahey Street. Check filmstreams.org for ticket information.
Justin Senkbile is a Hear Nebraska contributor focused on finding Nebraska music angles within the film scene. Help him out. Leave story suggestions or comments below, or email him at jmsenkbile@gmail.com.