The Mazumdar family are an ordinary working-class clan living in 1960s Calcutta. The patriarch of the family has always been Subrata (Anil Chatterjee), a banker who has made it his life’s intention to provide for his family, which includes his wife Arati (Madhabi Mukherjee), his younger sister (Jaya Bhaduri), his son (Prosenjit Sarkar) and his elderly parents (Haren Chatterjee and Sefalika Devi), who instilled a sense of old-fashioned principles that the husband and father is the provider, with Subrata doing everything he can to be a good breadwinner for his family. However, times are tough for the Mazumdars, especially since they’re not able to afford a lot of necessities since the cost of living continues to grow rapidly. As a result, its Arati who decides that she is going to break from tradition and get a job, something that is seemingly unheard of in contemporary middle-class society, with the expectation being that a woman’s place is in the home. However, Arati is certainly not someone to adhere to conventions, and in this instance, she’s confronted with the choice of staying docile and following the rules or breaking with tradition and going out to seek employment as a way of giving her family the life they deserve. Her husband begrudgingly helps her find a job as a saleswoman for a local merchant, who instantly takes to the shy but intelligent Arati, whose reserved nature conceals a deep commitment to her work that makes his business even more profitable. However, this same joy isn’t shared by Arati’s family – Subrata feels emasculated, and her parents-in-law are vehemently against the idea of a wife and mother going into the workplace. However, when Subrata is retrenched after the bank collapses, Arati takes on the position as the sole breadwinner – but she finds it’s even more difficult than she expected to handle the demands of a job and her family life, especially when she dared to go against socially-mediated beliefs.

Satyajit Ray is, for lack of a more subtle term, quite simply one of the greatest filmmakers to ever work in the medium. His deft ability to produce works that were both unfurnished and deeply unassuming, yet still harbouring a sense of unimpeachable genius, is more than enough to qualify him as a true cinematic revolutionary. His long and prolific career produced numerous masterpieces – one of them being the present film, Mahanagar (also occasionally referred to by its English title, The Big City). Outside of Ray’s Apu Trilogy and a few other significant works, this is amongst his finest achievement, an elegant social drama that is executed with the poise and gracefulness that the director brought to absolutely every one of his productions, simple but effective filmmaking that situates the audience right there in the room with the characters, following their every action in a way that feels intimate but far from voyeuristic. A wonderfully special work in both the story the director weaves from quite a straightforward premise, and the quaint style he uses to bring it to life, Mahanagar is nothing short of a masterpiece. Ray is the rare kind of director who not only manages to grabs the attention of the viewer at that present moment in which he’s working, but also one who captivates the viewer’s heart, with his stories burrowing themselves into our subconscious, creating a sensation unlike any other. Like the vast majority of his films, Ray employs his distinctive narrative techniques that show an achingly beautiful sense of empathy and warmth that transports us from the passivity of simply viewing this story, and transplants us in this unique form of the world Ray envisioned. Its an utterly exquisite piece that challenges boundaries, and even through telling quite a subdued story, manages to be thoroughly compelling and perpetually fascinating, which is nothing less than expected for a film by Ray, who once again proves himself to be a director more than deserving of being canonized as a cinematic iconoclast.

Had we not been told that Mahanagar was made in the 1960s, you’d think it was produced much later – as I’ve come to realize with Ray’s films, they may be dated in their temporal context, but their socio-cultural underpinnings are timeless, and as we see throughout many of his films, he makes use of a set of conventions that prevent his work from being dated beyond necessity. As a result, we have a film like Mahanagar, which is remarkably ahead of its time – Ray was an incredibly progressive filmmaker, always having a firm grasp on the cultural pulse, exploring different aspects of the human condition in a way that is meaningful but not overwrought or heavy-handed in any conceivable way. They’re social dramas that avoid overt moralizing, instead choosing the more graceful path of electrifyingly elegant social statements. In Mahanagar, Ray is taking aim at the workforce, and society’s relationship with those that occupy it. In contemporary terms (as well as from a western standpoint, which is important to note, since watching a film like Mahanagar can be quite an insightful experience for those looking to voyage into the heart of a culture that we may not be all that familiar with in terms of the intimacy Ray explores here), a film centred around a woman facing numerous challenges when wanting to get a job seems out of date, especially in terms of Indian culture, since we’ve seen many women overcome cultural boundaries to take on broader responsibilities, with current numbers showing a significant amount of women in the labour force. However, without venturing too deep into Indian economic policy, it’s clear that the general consensus in 1963 was much different – women in the workforce was not unheard of, but extremely uncommon, which gives Mahanagar its basis, and a point from which to provide some truly fascinating commentary on this issue at a time in which such debates were far more common.

However, Ray isn’t interested in providing context into this debate – as far as he’s concerned, its a perfectly natural progression in social structure that should be encouraged. Mahanagar is not a film about choosing a side, but rather a realist drama that intends to portray the conditions and social perceptions around this kind of issue. Ray is an inherently descriptive filmmaker – not quite in the same vein as the pastoralists that he’s often been compared to due to his tendency to create stunningly beautiful works that look at both nature and industrialization in comparison to shifting mentalities, he was perpetually engaged in some kind of social discourse, continuously provoking the boundaries of the culture he adored, but was not afraid to critique or unsettle for the sake of finding some underlying truth. Mahanagar is one of his most socially-charged pieces, a chance for him to make a bold statement without actually distracting from the filmmaking around it. He brings a meticulous dedication to these stories that allows him to plunge unchartered depths of society, finding subjects that manage to be fertile ground for his unique and often idiosyncratic explorations of humanity, channelling these issues through simple but poignant works that feel both timely and timeless in equal measure. The “working girl” sub-genre is one that gradually became quite notable in post-Second World War media, with the idea that archaic views of heteronormative, patriarchal social structure were no longer infallible, and were slowly going out of fashion – Ray makes it very clear that exploring this discourse was his main intention with Mahanagar, where the general framework was based on a hot-button issue (and consider the intrepidity such a story required to execute based on being situated in a culture that wasn’t as open to challenging gender roles at the time as many of the prominent western nations). It’s a fascinating approach to a highly-resonant concept that Ray executes with immense precision and effortless mastery, making something that is profoundly moving without being saccharine in any way.

On a more filmic level, Mahanagar has many of the director’s most significant trademarks as well – not only is it strikingly beautiful (there are some shots that are truly swoon-worthy), but the compositions are so simple yet stark, they leave a long-lasting impression on the mind of the viewer. Moreover, this is yet another wonderful character-driven piece hailing from the mind of a director who appeared to possess an understanding of humanity that very few artists seemed to have. Comprising around a half a dozen memorable characters in both leading and scene-stealing supporting roles, Mahanagar is an exceptional piece of humanity condensed into two hours of exquisite storytelling. In putting this film together, Ray works closely in collaboration with a few terrific actors, extracting some incredible performances from all of them. The radiant Madhabi Mukherjee occupies the main role as the protagonist Arati, a housewife who abandons her socially-mediated position in favour of taking the revolutionary step to getting a job and providing for her family. Humble but incandescent, there’s an immense power brewing below the surface in Mukherjee’s performance, as the character she is playing navigates the challenges she’s presented with, growing gradually as an individual in a way that keeps the audience invested and entirely engaged in her journey. Anil Chatterjee is a formidable co-lead, playing the husband who is caught between his own adherence to traditions and his adoration of his wife, who he initially wants to protect from the harsh world outside their front door, but is shown to actually be terrified of having his masculinity threatened – the moment where the film switches gears, whereby Arati is the breadwinner while Subrata is reduced to sitting at home all day, is simmering with anger and perverse humour, with the performers adapting extremely well to the different requirements of the characters. There are some wonderful supporting performances by Haren Chatterjee, Haradhan Bannerjee and Vicky Redwood, all of which are initially comic relief but have moments of sincere depth, where their characters are given sincere shades of personality. Each member of the cast of Mahanagar is pivotal to the film’s overall success, playing these parts with a kind of natural warmth that makes them seem less like constructions and more like fully-formed individuals, a common trait in Ray’s films.

Ultimately, Mahanagar is a very impressive film for a number of reasons. Satyajit Ray was a director whose work was so consistent in both quality and meaning, its almost a given that the experience of watching one of his films will be something truly special. He could capture the human condition in its most raw, natural state imaginable, exploring it in ways that give him the chance to dig deep into various facets of culture, without exploiting the roots of what he’s investigating with these bold but delicate stories, which attempt to look beyond the restrictions set upon them by expectations and the conventions of the time. The director acts as our guide, taking us through a labyrinth of meaningful commentary, from which he asserts his broader artistic aims onto a film with bilateral intentions – as a social message film, Mahanagar elegantly demonstrates the dominant cultural perceptions surrounding economic machinations, showing the relationship those who fervently hold onto their beliefs have with a shift in the mentality, and how the balance between traditions and progressions may not be as easily attainable as we may think based on contemporary perceptions of these issues. Conversely, purely taking it as a piece of filmmaking, Mahanagar is just as astounding – simmering with a kind of artistic brilliance that depicts a director at the very peak of his creative career (although an argument can be made that Ray was always at the top of his game right until his last film), and put together with a compelling ease that was only possible as the work of a filmmaker whose seamless abilities could allow him to venture beyond the confines of what is normally shown on screen, flourishing into something so gorgeous and poignant in intention, yet magnificently simple in scope. Mahanagar is a masterful exploration of social unease, brimming with heartbreaking honesty and good-natured humour that breaks the tension and allows Ray to capture the spark of reality that tends to make all of his films so worthwhile.