A Famine of Strong Characters
Ashani Sanket (1973) is Satyajit Ray’s second colour film after Kanchenjunga (1962). And once again, I couldn’t help feeling that colour restricts Ray. Black and white brings out the best in him — the sharpness, the moral tension, the quiet drama that breathes between faces and silences.
Whenever Ray turns to social themes — Devi, Mahanagar, Jana Aranya — colour seems to work against him. The frames become heavier, the ideas louder, and the characters, oddly thinner.
This time, Ray chooses the Bengal Famine of 1943. Rice disappears, prices shoot up, and people die in hordes under British watch. It is a catastrophe that needs no embellishment. And yet, in Ashani Sanket, the subject becomes king. The people living inside it never quite come alive.
Gangacharan and Angana: names without force
At the centre of the film are Gangacharan and his wife Angana, played by Soumitra Chatterjee and Bobita.
On paper, they should be compelling. On screen, they remain strangely insipid. Gangacharan observes the famine, explains it, and moralises about it — but he never truly acts. His idealism feels pre-packaged, never tested by hunger. Angana exists largely as a function of suffering, without inner contradiction.
Ray, usually a master of human complexity, gives us none here. Hunger never reshapes these people from within. They remain correct, restrained, and distant — figures guiding us through history rather than living inside it.
When exposition takes over
Ray leans heavily on exposition. Rice prices are discussed repeatedly. War logistics are explained. Administrative failure is outlined in detail. The film begins to feel instructional, almost documentary-like.
Ray wants us to understand the famine. But understanding is not the same as feeling. In explaining too much, he leaves too little room for emotional intimacy.
Chutki and Jadu: where the film briefly breathes
The most alive character in the film is Chutki, played by Sandhya Roy.
Her sex-for-rice negotiations with Scarface Jadu are the film’s most unsettling and honest moments. Chutki’s apathy is mesmerizing. She does not moralise. She adapts.
Jadu is not demonised. His desires are crude, but human. These scenes remind us of Ray’s true strength — observing how social collapse quietly rearranges morality.
When the theme overwhelms the filmmaker
Ashani Sanket feels like a film overawed by its own subject. The famine is too large, too tragic, too important — and it overwhelms Ray’s instinct for character-building.
The result is a film that is sincere and informative, but emotionally distant.
It shows us a famine. But it starves us of strong characters.
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