Somewhere in the region of Bengal stands a grand manor. The occupant is Biswambhar Roy (Chhabi Biswas), an incredibly rich landowner who uses his wealth to satiate his addictions – however, unlike many others, Roy’s vice isn’t alcohol or opiates, but rather music, which has always been his passion. On any given day, he could be found surrounded by his friends and colleagues in his enormous estate’s music room, the epicentre of his many extravagant parties, almost all of which focus around music, with Roy hiring any musician who takes his interest to perform for a small crowd of admirers. However, this decadence doesn’t last long, especially after Roy’s family is killed after coming into contact with a fatal cyclone, leaving him entirely alone, surrounded only by his small group of servants who aren’t able to give him the companionship he yearns for, and instead find themselves shifted to the side, folly to a man who has gone from having an incredible lust for life, to a shadow of his former self. Roy wanders the barren corridors of his now-empty home, growing more frail and lonely as the days go on. He refuses to adapt to the times, despite the radical industrialization going on around him, and not even when a former colleague of his, Mahim Ganguli (Gangapada Bose), who owns the property alongside Roy’s, urges him to accept the future, he refuses. He is set in his ways, and prefers to do what he loves – but when so much of his joy comes from the memories he shared with others in that home, it becomes increasingly difficult. Over time, the music room is locked up, with Roy refusing to engage in even the most pleasurable activities – yet, as time goes on, the memory of the room and what it represented in his mind continue to haunt him, and he realizes that perhaps the most healing path is the most obvious one.

Satyajit Ray made an incredible film – and occurring between the first two films in his Apu Trilogy, and the work that would go on to define him as a world-renowned filmmaker in the next decade, was The Music Room (Bengali: জলসাঘর), a beautifully poetic drama that sees the esteemed filmmaker, still in the earlier stages of his career, establishing a particular style that may not be carried over directly to his later films, but rather serves to set a foundation for the kinds of elegant, meditative explorations of humanity that would come to define his career. Ray was a fascinating filmmaker, and while The Music Room is perhaps not the most thorough introductory text to his work, it’s foolish to deny the brilliance underpinning this film – it’s a poignant exercise in magical realism that is deeply grounded in a recognizable world, but still detached from it in such a way to create the sensation of something ethereal, without losing sight of the main thrust of the story, which may be difficult to discern at first, but eventually comes about through the director’s magnificent control of the different aspects of the story. The Music Room is a tremendous film – impenetrable in a very effective way, where we are positioned as observers rather than participants, and taken on a fascinating journey through the life of a man over the course of a few years as he comes to terms with some of life’s most difficult realities – the shallowness of wealth, the continuous march of time that waits for no one, and the great inevitability of death – and through factoring in the harsh truth about his own fallibility, Roy begins to understand that there is a world outside the walls of his palace. It’s a unique method that may be somewhat difficult at first, especially for those acclimated to the director’s distinct style that he’d employ in his best films, but it stands as one of his most poignant experiments that is consistently rebellious in its approach.

Throughout The Music Room, Ray is operating at his most metaphysical, crafting a film that is less about storyline and more focused on the themes that underpin the story.  Less about telling a story, and more focused on setting a distinct tone and capturing certain emotions, the film is quite a riveting experience once the viewer is on Ray’s wavelength. At first, it requires some suspension of disbelief – this is a film that apparently exists outside of time, with the story never leaving the confines of the protagonist’s estate, and thus could be set in any period after the turn of the twentieth century, with the director intentionally leaving it vague, as a way of detaching the story from a particular temporal moment. This affords Ray the chance to comment on the intersections between materialism and existential angst in a way that feels authentic, with the idea of the cultural importance of wealth becoming secondary to the more interesting commentary on how those who have accrued endless amounts of wealth tend to experience life in a radically different way, whether for better or worse. Ray was a filmmaker always focused on saying something, and while The Music Room may belong in the category of more non-traditional narrative films, it still manages to convey a deep and insightful message that gradually surfaces the further we venture inwards, with every opportunity to explore the mind of the main character – who is less of a singular figure and more of a representation of an entire generation – being utilized to the point where the audience can truly connect with the character, even at his most unlikeable, which is a credit to both Ray and Chhabi Biswas for creating such a compelling protagonist, exploring his inner nuances in a thoroughly effective manner. The director, in exploring various themes, finds himself touching on a certain kind of existential malaise that rarely manifests in such a raw and hauntingly beautiful way – and the manner in which the film navigates these issues, showing restraint where it matters, but not neglecting to lend The Music Room the visual panache it needed to be fully encompassing of the emotions that so frequently manifest narratively.

The visual splendour of The Music Room should not be underestimated – this is a film centred on a very wealthy man whose livelihood is essentially constructed by his constant need to engage in excessive spending, normally taking the form of lavish parties. Ray, however, understands that simply providing a spectacle isn’t convincing enough, and instead of simply resorting to grandeur, he instead creates a memorable tapestry that weaves together materialistic desire with more metaphysical aspects. Most of this takes the form of the setting of The Music Room – the castlelike home that Roy resides in becomes something of a character in itself. Despite the film taking place solely on the property, we don’t see more than a fraction of it, with the enormous, endless hallways hiding many secrets that only become more embedded into the history of this place as it deteriorates around its owner. Much like Roy, the house is falling apart with age, becoming a victim of neglect, and standing on its last legs, perpetually awaiting a complete collapse. The sparse visual style of this film lends The Music Room an eerie sense of foreboding, and in both the earlier scenes, where the house is alive and animated with music and dancing and the later parts, where the protagonist walks through his halls and reflects on his own life, there’s a certain baroque melancholy that simply can’t be represented adequately through the story, instead coming about through the various stylistic and para-artistic choices made by Ray. There are a few musical interludes throughout the film (hence the title), in which we see extended performances of traditional music, done to not only demonstrate the main character’s compulsive adoration of music, but also to create a tone of distant yearning that rarely manifests in words, but can be felt through the affectations of music – no film has been more adept at fully embodying Duke Orsino’s iconic refrain in Twelfth Night of “If music be the food of love, play on/Give me excess of it; that surfeiting/The appetite may sicken, and so die” than this one, which takes some fascinating ideas and explores them incredibly well.

Ray knew better than most how to extract the most from a scene, and The Music Room is a wonderful embodiment of this. There’s a lot to be said about this film, but what makes this film so special, and something that can essentially be extended to all of Ray’s work, is how the most poignant aspects are those that don’t lend themselves to description, but rather burrow into our subconscious and give us something to ruminate on after we’ve explored this beautiful world Ray has created. It’s a film that takes a distinct visual approach to the material, perhaps not in the way we’d expect, and evokes a sense of quiet longing that functions extremely well in the context of this story. It may take some time to get a handle of the film, especially if one is mostly familiar with Ray’s more realistic style, as this film relies more on capturing ideas than it does telling a story. The Music Room is an undeniably powerful film – thematically, it is brimming with both melancholy (in how it explores the gradual decline in the life of a distinct bon vivant as he undergoes a process of letting go of his worldly possessions after the tragedy) and hauntingly beautiful commentary on the fragility of life, and the means with which we feed our souls. If there is one aspect of this film that we can reduce its many messages to, it’s that The Music Room is a film about realizing that regardless of the wealth someone possesses, there is always going to be something just out of reach, a void that no amount of materialism can ever satiate. Words are hardly adequate in describing the more impalpable sensations that flow through this film, which is truly a testament to the brilliance of a director who, even at his most experimental, is truly a towering figure, capable of doing just about anything.