![]() ![]() ![]() As soon as they meet the two women strike an alliance that makes them practically inseparable, though each one dutifully respects the codes of her own social functions. It is something that Binodini, as handsome, vibrant, intelligent and striking as she is, has trouble accepting.īy a quirk of fate she is brought back into the home of Mahendra who is now married to Asha (Sen), a gloriously beautiful, but very young and completely innocent, spoiled, uneducated girl. She does not remarry and is not allowed any male company, has to keep a strict dietary regime without meat or fish, and, briefly, becomes a non-person whose only purpose in life remains to serve others to the best of her ability. When her husband dies after one year she remains a widow, becoming an outcast in respectable Indian society. ![]() The story follows Binodini (Rai), a beautiful young woman, who, upon being rejected by two wealthy best friends for marriage, Mahendra (Chaterjee) and Behari (Raychaudhuri) marries someone else. And that is a pretty rare in films of any origin. Unlike many shorter films, which fail to get on with their stories, there is never the feeling here that time is wasted for no purpose. Chokher Bali offers an intelligent and sensitive picture that should do well. Beautifully shot in dark, reddish hues, mostly in interiors, lavishly designed and featuring stellar performances by Aishawarya Rai, star of festival favourite Devdas, and Raima Sen in the two title roles, it manages to overcome a muddled introduction that has trouble putting each of the characters in its right context and a strangely inconclusive ending which Tagore himself was unhappy with at the time. This adaptation of the novel written by India's Nobel prize winner Rabindranath Tagore in 1902 tries to expand the story of "four young people trapped in a tangle of sensuality" (in Tagore's words) into a larger parable on the state of women in general and widows in particular, inside Indian society, as well as the political unrest and nationalist feelings generated by Britain's division of Bengal into two. ![]()
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