The Music Room (Jalsaghar)

Vanity of vanities, All is vanity

May 01, 2023

Directed by Satyajit Ray

India, 1958

It is the half shades, the hardly audible notes that I want to capture and explore. My films are about human beings, human relationships, and social problems. On a certain level, foreign audiences can appreciate Indian works, but many details are missed. For example, when they see a woman with a red spot on her forehead, they don’t know that this is a sign showing that she is married, or that a woman dressed in a white sari is a widow. Indian audiences understand this at once; it is self-evident for them. So, on certain level, the cultural gap is too wide. But on a psychological level, on the level of social relations, it is possible to relate.

Satyajit Ray on Cinema

The Music Room opens with the credits playing over a shimmering chandelier in a darkened room, the music room. The chandelier stays with us throughout the film, at times grandiose and glistening, then swaying as a warning, before the candles flicker, becoming subdued. It is the cinematic equivalent of the skull in a Renaissance portrait. A memento mori – a reminder that all must die.

Satyajit Ray’s 1958 film followed the second part of his Apu Trilogy, the first of which, Pather Panchali, is widely recognised as a masterpiece of cinema (a view endorsed by ReidsonFilm). Before going on to complete the trilogy he tried something different. Whereas Pather Panchali has a neo-realist minimalism about it, here is a film laced with visual and musical flourishes. Ray demonstrates that he is one of cinema’s great stylists, alongside Ozu, Visconti, and Orson Welles – of whom more later.

The Music Room, based on a short story by Tarasankar Banerjee, is set in 1920s Bengal. Chhabi Biswas, an eminent stage actor, plays Biswambhar Roy, an aristocratic zamindar (landlord) living through a sweeping tide of change. While his family wealth ebbs away Roy’s neighbour, Ganguli, a self-made – and significantly lower caste – businessman, played by Gangapada Bose in excruciating Uriah Heep-mode, becomes ever more successful through money lending. In spite of his wife’s pleading Roy sells the family jewels to maintain their household and standard of living. Amid crumbling opulence and perpetually puffing away on his hookah he withdraws to a perfumed existence where his sole pleasure is music. The music room is where he invites, at increasing cost, a procession of distinguished musicians to play for him as he entertains his guests.

Until midway through the film the narrative of The Music Room unfolds through flashback. Ray shares a deluded sense of status with Norma Desmond the faded Hollywood star in that classic film noir, Sunset Boulevard:

“I am big! It's the pictures that got small.”

But the film that most clearly influences The Music Room is Welles’ Citizen Kane. Both tell the story of the destruction of a man through hubris. Both are distinguished by their shared visual flair. Shot like a Baroque painting Ray uses light and shadow to evoke atmosphere and character. He borrows the overhead and low-angle shots of Kane to emphasis Roy’s isolation. However there are differences: where Kane depicts the tragedy of a single man, with The Music Room as the wide river Padma slowly erodes the landscape we are witnessing the washing away of a feudal system. Tragedy inevitably befalls Roy. It is a tragedy that is foreshadowed by omens, yet he remains passive, crippled by complacency.

Without music, life would be a mistake – Friedrich Nietzsche

And of course there is the music, central to Roy’s life and also to the film. Hypnotic Indian classical music pervades most scenes, although there is a comic moment where we hear Colonel Bogey’s March (Bridge of the River Kwai) blaring from Ganguli’s house. It is as jarring for us the audience as it is for Roy. The sequences in the music room itself are passionate and exhilarating, featuring virtuosic sitarists and singers. They reach a climax in the final act with a dance performance by Roshan Kumari which is literally mesmerising.

Share Reids on Film

When The Music Room was released Ray was criticized for an overly romanticised portrayal of the ruling elite. Is Biswambhar Roy a sympathetic character? ReidsonFilm were divided on this question. The director doesn’t shy away from showing the selfish, pathetic and often petty aspects of his nature. He is not afraid to spend time (too much time for some) in prolonged close-up of the taciturn, still face of Chhabi Biswas. And Roy’s flaws are reflected in the reaction of his two ever-present servants, one his super-ego, the other his id, played in diverting cameos by Tulsi Lahiri and Kali Sarkar.

He literally did nothing for 90% of the film … his love of music feels more tied to the ceremony than the actual music - N

The Music Room is a film of beautifully composed shots: the solitary elephant being washed in the river, the chandelier reflected in a glass of cognac, the large spider scuttling across Roy’s portrait. The grand set design, by Bansi Chandragupta, prefigures the ruination of the bourgeoisie depicted in Fellini’s 8½. However as the film draws to a close we are once again reminded of the influence of Hollywood, for the final moments are surely a homage to a sequence from Gone with the Wind.

And then the chandelier, finally, is extinguished.