Roy (Chabi Biswas), an old aristocrat, takes the sun on the roof of his palace, and the performance of Satyajit Ray, a statue of the Commander of Indian cinema from the 1950s, makes his decline understandable with an extraordinary economy of means. A hint of worry and worry lies in the sigh of a waiter, the furniture is a little too bare, the increase in arrogance mixed with the latent sadness in the host’s eyes, and there you go, the profound truth of “Salon de musique”, the filmmaker’s classic classic, unfolds very clearly. We understand here that the arrogant little king, interested in culture, squandered his wealth, even endangered his descendants with his aesthetic posture, by organizing concerts held in special halls, in the presence of local elites.
Modern India, pragmatic, westernized, but also cruel to the little people
Among them, a newcomer, Ganguly, a loan shark by trade, a man with no manners, a homemade man, as he defines himself, the incarnation of modern India, pragmatic, westernized, but also cruel to the little people who Roy captures, he, as his loyal subjects. Ray has no fun pitting these two iconic characters against each other in a culture clash worthy of a boxing match. Through the many musical interludes given by the best artists of his time (singer Begum Akhtar, and above all the amazing dancer Roshan Kumari), so many scenes act as both pure joy and Shakespearean chants touting the worst, filmmakers it satisfies itself with recording the etiolation of the former in contact with the latter as climatic phenomena with identified causes and undeniable consequences.
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This film deserves a lovely distance from this little metaphorical tale. There is no contempt for Ganguly, this is simply a vengeful rookie, cheated in spite of himself, or even a trickle of empathy for Roy, rattling violently in Don Quixote’s Bengali imitation, without denying for all that flamboyance of his desires or of his undeniable nobility. suicidal act. His final stride in the desert, an anthology series that oscillates between opera mirages and deadly jokes, is the most compelling illustration of this.
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“Music room”
Monday 15 August at 11:50 am in Arte. Indian drama by Satyajit Ray (1958). With Chhabi Biswas, Gangapada Basu, Padma Devi. 1h35. (Available in replay until October 13, 2022 on Arte.tv).
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