The father-in-law is interesting. It seems to be played as if he has a right to go to his former students with his hand out. Is that acceptable in this society? Particularly as at the time he does it the family as a whole are doing OK; seems as if his pride means his has to do something underhand instead of accepting his daughter-in-law's gifts. Also his students start off seeming to respect him and then we learn he was caning them constantly at school, ugh!
Yeah, it's not really acceptable at all
. But a deep reverence for your teacher is a huge part of the culture for sure. We are raised to think of our teachers as second only to our parents in terms of the respect they deserve. It doesn't quite work out that way anymore but Indian/Hindu mythology has a lot of references to great student-teacher relationships and the importance of the teacher to one's success is emphasized a lot. So I definitely understand where he's coming from.
The anglo-indian girl seems to be set up as a character who will get on the wrong side of her boss, but the film is careful to show that the time she has off work is genuine. It makes the point even more strongly about Arati's strength of character that she reacts the way she does to the dismissal; so yes my impression overall was that Ray was praising those traditional values and using the sunglasses and the lipstick as symbols of a woman making steps into a newer world. So I saw that side as very positive and affirming.
I agree with most of what you're saying I think. Except that as much as I think Ray appreciates Arati's traditional values, he understands that the lipstick and the sunglasses are not so much an evil influence as much as a way for her to open herself up to new things. Like Arati, I too saw them (and Edith) as superficially foreign and different but fundamentally positive and something she could learn to appreciate.
I love the line she repeats to her husband a couple of times- "don't YOU misunderstand me" pleading with him not to be as dense as the rest of the family...very affecting; you want your partner to be the one person who will always understand.
Yep, agree completely. I love her relationship with her husband and as idealized as it seemed to me while watching the film, I want to believe that this type of relationship is possible. Madhabi Mukherjee's performance is more immediately noticeably great but I think Anil Chatterjee who plays her husband is pretty great too (as is Jaya Bhaduri as her sister-in-law).
btw this film has absolutely the worst set of subtitles in the history of subtitle-dom. Great expanses of no text followed by bursts of everyone's conversation butted together. Like most things you can get used to it but they seemed to be put together by somebody who wanted to sabotage the film.
btw2 the dvd box said this was a Bollywood film. The setting might be right be, but you wouldn't call this Bollywood would you?
Ouch, this probably means you didn't watch the Artificial Eye release
. The Indian DVD is terrible especially in terms of the subtitles. If you decide to explore his other films, it's worth trying to get a hold of the Artificial Eye box sets. They're much better.
And no, I wouldn't call his films Bollywood at all. Regional Indian cinema is a lot more interesting than Bollywood to me. Especially Bengali and Malayalam cinema and they have little to nothing in common with Bollywood for the most part.