Devi (Satyajit Ray, 1960) (Patreon)

Faith and reason, at it again. As is often the case in Ray's films, Devi provokes crucial questions regarding the treatment of women in Bengali society. But he does this by taking their dehumanization to the limits of tolerability. In this regard, Ray is less a feminist than a humanist, never delivering broadsides against the patriarchy (that was Ritwik's métier) but proposing that women's oppression degrades us all.

Devi is the most direct statement of this thesis that I've seen from Ray so far. Uma (Soumitra Chatterjee) is a reasonably wealthy Brahmin who, after three years of marriage decides to leave his wife Dayamoyee (Sharmila Tagore) behind and go to Kolkata to study English. In an early conversation, it is established that Uma doesn't need to do this for professional reasons. He just thinks it's what a well-heeled man of the world ought to do. So Daya is left behind at the family mansion, which they share with Uma's brother, sister-in-law, and nephew Khoka (Arpan Chowdhury). And most significantly, Daya is left to take care of Uma's elderly father (Chhabi Biswas), who is deeply devout.

The old man has a dream that Dayaboyee is the incarnation of the goddess Kali, and he firmly believes this to be true. He also convinces many of the locals of this, and soon, because of an apparent "faith healing," Daya is declared to be Kali by popular acclamation. She is situated on an altar as hundreds of Hindus line up to pay homage to her, and ask for blessings. When Uma (who is agnostic) returns from Kolkata to discover what has happened to his wife, he is horrified.

Ray very subtly suggests that Uma's father has prurient interest in the young, beautiful Daya, and this untenable desire is channeled into goddess worship. One way or another, the woman is turned into an object of devotion, and she is physically exploited by this religious attention. She barely moves, is never seen eating, and can sleep only fitfully. When Khoka gets sick, even the local doctor refuses to intervene, since he thinks to do so would be sacrilege. Why not just as Kali to heal him? This puts Uma, and especially Khoka's mother (Karuna Banerjee) one one side of the social divide, and virtually everyone else on the other.

In the middle of all this is Dayaboyee, who is only 17. She succumbs to the demands placed on her by those around her, and seems to eventually develop a kind of Stockholm syndrome. When Uma tries to get her to escape with him, she can't. "What if I am Kali?" she asks, suggesting that she is losing her identity completely. And when it is definitively revealed that Daya is not divine, it is too late.

What's most interesting about Devi is Ray's formal approach, which is markedly different from the Apu films (at least the two I've seen). Using harsh close-ups, rigid camera movements, and geometrical editing, Ray seems to be making an homage to Sergei Eisenstein. (One shot, in which a poor old man asks Daya to heal his grandson, almost directly recreates a shot from the Odessa steps sequence of Potemkin.) It reflects a streak of brutal irony in Ray that he would filter this story of misplaced belief through the syntax of history's most famous Communist filmmaker. And it also suggests where Ray's sympathies lie.