Blu-ray Review: Satyajit Ray’s Devi on the Criterion Collection

Satyajit Ray’s Devi opens on a rural Indian town during Durga Puja, an annual festival that pays homage to the Hindu goddess Durga. A statue of the goddess is carefully framed between a pair of large curtains to make it look as if it’s on a theatrical stage, while a mostly male crowd prays to it. After the fireworks die out and the festivities end, the statue is tossed in a nearby river, where it quickly sinks to the bottom.

Across this brief, kinetically edited sequence, Ray shrewdly comments on the fickle nature of pious men, while also foretelling the tragic fate of his story’s young protagonist, Doyamoyee (Sharmila Tagore). After her husband, Umaprasad (Soumitra Chatterjee), leaves to Calcutta for more schooling, Doyamoyee remains at his family home with her devout father-in-law, Kalikinkar (Chhabi Biswas), whose admiration for her ultimately turns disastrous.

While the naïve, kind-hearted, yet perpetually somber Doyamoyee is the heart of Devi, it’s the film’s competing worldviews—orthodox Hinduism and scientific rationalism, both of which are imposed by men—that drives the narrative. Ray explores these two conflicting paradigms through the combative father-son relationship between Umaprasad and Kalikinkar. The former is a man of science who rejects all forms of religious superstitions, while the latter is a feudal landlord who’s dedicated his life to worshipping the Mother Goddess.

When Umaprasad is away, though, Kalinkar takes Doyamoyee’s subservience to him in completely unintended ways, particularly following a foot massage when the old man has a sensual, feverish dream that convinces him that she’s the incarnation of the Mother Goddess, and must now be treated as such. It’s after this point that Doyamoyee loses what little agency she has, and much like the Durga statue in the opening, she’s placed on something resembling a stage where people from all over the region come to praise her and beseech her for help.

As Ray’s framing suggests, the young girl’s status as a goddess is wholly performative, but throughout the film, she remains unsure of her supposed ability to miraculously heal others and how to adapt to the hefty responsibilities her new status demands she take on. Stuck between the fawning devotion of Kalinkar and countless other worshippers and the more modern, rationalist views held by Umaprasad and his sister, Harasundari (Karuna Bannerjee), who believe Kalinkar has become senile, Doyamoyee is slowly and meticulously driven mad.

Ever the humanist, Ray makes it clear where his sympathies lie, presenting Kalinkar as uncompromising and reckless in his use of power, while frequently dollying into close-ups of Doyamoyee to take in her wide-eyed expressions of disorientation, melancholy, and utter helplessness. But while Ray sees Doyamoyee as a victim, he doesn’t wholeheartedly dismiss Kalinkar’s religiosity. Immediately after Umaprasad returns to put a stop to the charade, a villager’s extremely sick grandchild is mysteriously cured of his illness after drinking the water used to wash Doyamoyee’s feet. It’s perhaps not an act of miraculous recovery as extraordinary as the one in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet, but it provides sufficient context for why so many poor, uneducated villagers would see this as indisputable proof of her powers.

Set in the late 19th century, Devi envisions a precarious battle between two Indias: one traditional and rigorously pious, the other modern and on the cusp of revolution. The struggle, tragically and perhaps fittingly, leads to the destruction of an innocent young woman, one of many brought to ruin over centuries of arcane beliefs and traditions followed by the orthodox Hindus in the country. Devi functions first and foremost as a parable, but in the end, its deeply sensitive, heartfelt performances lend it an emotional urgency and immediacy that enlivens the psychological and moral struggles of everyone in the film.

Image/Sound

Transferred from a new 4K digital restoration, the Criterion Collection’s Blu-ray is, for the most part, stunning. The first reel does show some light but persistent vertical scratches on the right side of the frame, and some other minor marks of damage. But the image is so sharp and highly detailed, enhanced by a high contrast ratio and deep, inky blacks that highlight the beauty of Subrata Mitra’s lush, chiaroscuro cinematography, that these flaws are easily ignored. The remainder of the film is free of any of these blemishes, while the audio features a well-balanced mix that highlights the beautiful textures of Ali Akbar Khan’s score.

Extras

Criterion’s Blu-ray is a bit light on extras, but fortunately, the few included here offer wonderful insight into Devi, particularly in regards to the very specific cultural context in which Satyajit Ray’s film is set. In a 2013 interview, actors Sharmila Tagore and Soumitra Chatterjee discuss the importance of national reformism in helping women and the lower classes to gain rights. The two actors also touch on Ray’s ability to work with amateur and professional actors side by side. They also address the film’s reception in India at the time, where it was widely chastised for being anti-Hindu, a take that both actors outright reject (just as Ray did when he was alive). The second extra on the disc is a video essay by film scholar Meheli Sen, who provides crucial historical background about India’s widespread worshipping of “the great mother,” tying it into the film’s maternalistic representation of Doyamoyee from the very start. Lastly, critic Devika Girish’s essay in the accompanying booklet delves into Devi’s aesthetics and politics, shrewdly arguing that its “seductive sense of doubt” lends it a subtleness that prevents its anger from veering into didacticism.

Overall

Often lost in the shuffle of his early masterpieces, Satyajit Ray’s underseen but equally remarkable Devi gets a sparkling new transfer from the Criterion Collection.