I found this film listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and I read elsewhere that it is considered one of the greatest films in Asian cinema, so I hoped it would be worthwhile, directed by Ritwik Ghatak (The Cloud-Capped Star). Basically set in East Pakistan, after the 1947 partition of India, it tells the story of Hindu refugee Ishwar Chakraborty (Abhi Bhattacharya). He tries to start a new life, with his little sister Sita (Indrani Chakrabarty), they see the abduction of a low-caste woman in a refugee camp, Ishwar takes her little son Abhiram (Sriman Tarun) with him. Ishwar gets a job at a factory in the province, near the river Subarnarekha, when Abhiram (Satindra Bhattacharya) has grown up and completed his studies, he is asked to go the Germany. Abhiram and Sita (Madhabi Mukherjee) have grown up together, they find themselves falling in love, but Ishwar's fear of prejudice emerges, he does not want his sister, a Brahmin, to marry a lower caste boy. Sita gets married to another man, Ishwar is angry and heartbroken when during Sita's wedding she and Abhiram run off and go to Calcutta. Abhiram and Sita live in the slums of Calcutta and try to make ends meet, they have a little son (Sriman Ashok Bhattacharya), one day Abhiram gets a job as a bus driver. But this leads to tragedy when he accidentally hits and kills a little girl, he is lynched by a crowd, and in desperation Sita is forced into thinking about prostitution. Meanwhile, Ishwar is living a sad and lonely life in the province, his old time friend Haraprasad (Bijon Bhattacharya) comes to visit him, and they decide to travel to Calcutta on a binge drinking tour. The two friends end up together completely drunk in a brothel, Ishwar staggers into one of the bedchambers, and he is shocked to be faced with his own sister, he would be her first "client". Sita immediately recognises him and, rather than submit to incest, shockingly slits her own throat, killing herself, Ishwar realises what has happened and breaks down. In the end, Ishwar meets Sita's little son, he is now his closest relative, he brightens up and decides to take the boy home with him. Also starring Bijon Bhattacharya as Haraprasad, Shriman Tarun as Young Abhiram and Gita Dey as Koushalya, Abhiram's mother. I will be completely honest and say that I had really pay attention to subtitles, as the black and white picture often hid the words, with the white, this made it a struggle to understand everything going on, but I just about got the gist, it was a fairly interesting drama. Worth watching!
Review of Subarnarekha
