Mira Nair on Satyajit Ray’s Masterpiece DEVI | From Studio 9

DEVI, which Ray made after the Apu Trilogy (THE SONG OF THE LITTLE ROAD, THE UNVANQUISHED, and THE WORLD OF APU), is an aching tour de force. Based on Prabhat Kumar Mukherjee’s story, Devi’s core debate — faith vs. reason — makes it more complex than the trilogy while remaining rooted in a family drama. After teenage newlyweds Umaprasad Chowdhury (Soumitra Chatterjee) and Doyamoyee (Sharmila Tagore) are separated as Umaprasad goes away to study, Doyamoyee dutifully massages the feet of her feudal father-in-law (Chhabi Biswas). Soon, he dreams that his beautiful daughter-in-law is the Hindu goddess Kali incarnate, and begins worshipping her. Doyamoyee is terrified of being trapped as a goddess, but a father–son showdown melts after she revives a dying child and news of her “miracles” spread like wildfire. Umaprasad persuades her to run away with him, but she has doubts: what if she is the goddess and cured that child?

Cinematographer Subrata Mitra’s work is impeccable; as the couple returns home through tall grass, melancholia engulfs you, in contrast with Apu and Durga’s joyous race through the tall grass in The Song of the Little Road. Doyamoyee’s inability to cure another sick child results in a grand tragedy. Ray daringly addresses a variation of the Oedipus complex, where the father-in-law, in a sense, “obtains” his daughter-in-law for himself. Ray revisited the faith-vs.-reason argument in An Enemy of the People (1989). Sixty years after Devi screened in competition at Cannes, Ray’s warnings are terrifyingly prescient: patriarchy and faith can be a fatal combination; in today’s India, this combination has nearly drowned out all reason.

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