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Ghare Baire (The Home and the World)
| Year | 1984 |
|---|---|
| Producer | National Film Development Corporation of India |
| Distributor | National Film Development Corporation of India |
| Screenplay | Satyajit Ray |
| Based on | The novel Ghare Baire by Rabindranath Tagore |
| Photography | Soumendu Roy |
| Editor | Dulal Dutta |
| Art Director | Ashoke Bose |
| Music | Satyajit Ray |
| Sound | Robin Sen Gupta, Jyoti Chatterjee, Anup Mukherjee |
| Length | 140 min. |
| Color |
Cast:
| Nikhilesh Choudhury | Victor Bannerjee |
|---|---|
| Sandip Mukherjee | Soumitra Chatterjee |
| Bimala Choudhury | Swatilekha Chatterjee |
| Kulada | Bimala Chatterjee |
| Headmaster | Manoj Mitra |
| Amulya | Indrapramit Roy |
| Nikhil's sister-in-law | Gopa Aich |
| Miss Gilby | Jennifer Kapoor |
The action occurs in 1905, in the period in which Great Britain, represented by Lord Curzon, decided the partition of Bengal in order to separate the Hindus and Moslems. The populace mobilized against this project in the nationalist movement known as swadeshi, which called for a boycott of foreign made goods, and in an insurrection which was subsequently suppressed. In this turbulent context, a bourgeois couple, Nikhil and Bimala, who have remained faithful to the ideals of the Bengal Renaissance, receive in their home a friend, Sandip, a vehement anti-English nationalist. Encouraged by her husband to be a "modern" woman, Bimala is seduced by Sandip, before gradually recognizing the duplicity of his motives and behavior.
In this film, as well as in Devi (The Goddess, 1960) and Charulata (The Lonely Wife, 1964), Ray explores the cultural emergence of the idea of the "modern woman" in the upper class of colonial India, showing with striking sensitivity the pressures this new ideal placed on individual women whose self-identities were also molded by traditional expectations.
