On a recommendation from my friend Joshua Wilson, co-host of the art-and-faith podcast See/Hear Brother, I took the Barnes & Noble half-off Criterion sale as an opportunity to gamble on something I haven’t seen before: Satyajit Ray’s film Devi. And I was not disappointed.
Devi, which arrived only five years after Ray’s beloved masterpiece Pather Panchali (which I wrote about here), takes place in bengal in the 19th century. We follow Doya (the dark-eyed and enchanting Sharmila Tagore), a quiet and mysterious young woman whose husband Umaprasad (Soumitra Chatterjee) is away from home to complete his studies (including studies in English). Due to his travels and his studies, Umaprasad is becoming increasingly Western in his ways of thinking, evolving into someone more rational and less superstitious than the traditional and religious community in which he grew up.
Thus he is unsettled to return home and discover that his religiously zealous father (Chhabi Biswas) has had a vision that Doya is an incarnation of the goddess Kali, and has fallen at her feet to worship her. Worse, his brother has followed suit.
Does Doya believe all of this madness? Is it too late to turn back this tide of seeming hysteria?
Here’s a movie that’s 61 years old, in a language I don’t speak, from a culture quite foreign to me, in which a man realizes the waves of death and destruction that can spread when “the faithful” choose to reject the great gifts of science and medicine in healing the sick and instead rely on “thoughts and prayers.”
Better to watch something timely, relevant, and relatable, huh?
We’re left to make up our own minds, aching for Doya in her bewilderment, sharing Umaprasad’s dread, and recognizing more than we might have anticipated about the whole scenario.
This is quite a discovery for me, and one that I may write into the syllabus of my “Film & Faith” course at Seattle Pacific University. It’s rare that I buy a blu-ray of a film I’ve never seen, but something — probably my love for Pather Panchali — persuaded me that this would be worth the investment. I’m confident it will be even more rewarding in subsequent viewings, and its unanswered questions are going to haunt me for a long time to come.
For a deeper dive, read Devika Girish‘s essay for The Criterion Collection.