Complete credited cast: | |||
Soumitra Chatterjee | ... | Amal | |
Madhabi Mukherjee | ... | Charulata | |
![]() |
Shailen Mukherjee | ... | Bhupati Dutta (as Sailen Mukherjee) |
![]() |
Shyamal Ghoshal | ... | Umapada |
![]() |
Gitali Roy | ... | Mandakini |
Rest of cast listed alphabetically: | |||
![]() |
Tarapada Basu | ||
![]() |
Gopaldas Bhattacharya | ||
![]() |
Dilip Bose | ... | Shashanka |
![]() |
Ramesh Chandra Chandra | ||
![]() |
Sunilkanta Dasgupta | ||
![]() |
Nilotpal Dey | ... | Joydeb |
![]() |
Bankim Ghosh | ... | Jagannath |
![]() |
Ajit Gupta | ||
![]() |
Bholanath Koyal | ... | Braja |
![]() |
Kamu Mukherjee |
Charu lives a lonely and idle life in 1870s India. Although her husband Bhupati devotes more time to his newspaper than to their marriage, he sees her loneliness and asks his brother-in-law,Umapada to keep her company. At the same time Bhupati's own cousin, Amal, a would-be writer comes home finishing his college education. However, after several months, Charu and Amal's feelings for each other move beyond literary friendship. Written by Erik Gregersen <erik@astro.asutexas.edu>
The best Satyajit Ray movie. Ray, at his peak, gave us his most convincing insight into love and loyalty, two of his universal themes. Unfortunately, the brilliant Apu trilogy has more of an visceral draw to Western audiences and Charulata is overlooked. The Apu trilogy invokes the idea of the Western view of India right or wrong while Charulata almost represents an anomaly of upperclass Indians in the late Victorian era.
Charulata actually is a better film than any of those in the Apu trilogy (as hard as that is to believe) not to mention the most visually striking. However, the one thing Apu trilogy has over Charulata is its freshness. But this almost the same situation as Martin Scorsese and Mean Streets and Taxi Driver. This is not to say that he didn't make any good movies after that. Goodfellas is perhaps his best.
In the end, Ray had style as well as substance in many of his films and Charulata represents that pinnacle while the Apu trilogy establishes what was to come.