The Home and the World

Director: Satyajit Ray, Satyajit Ray, Satyajit Ray, Satyajit Ray, Satyajit Ray, Satyajit Ray, Satyajit Ray, Satyajit Ray, Satyajit Ray

1984 / 140min / 35mm

Ray finally realized his long-standing ambition to adapt Bengali novelist Rabindranath Tagore’s 1916 novel of the same name in this late-career triumph. In turn-of-the-last-century Bengal, a progressive nobleman (Victor Banerjee) and his tradition-minded wife (Swatilekha Sengupta) have their orderly existence upended with the arrival of the husband’s old friend (Soumitra Chatterjee), a committed revolutionist who exercises an immediate influence on his friend’s wife. Observing the temptations and terrors of “independence” in both the domestic and the collective, political spheres, Ray’s rich, ruminative film is one of the pinnacles of an extraordinary oeuvre.

“There are many Ray films I haven’t seen, but this one currently stands above the rest.”—Graham Carter