The Music Room (Criterion Collection)

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Review added by
Stuart McLean

Jalsaghar (original title)
Certificate:
Running Time: 98 Minutes
Retail Price:
Release Date: 07/08/2017
Content Type: Movie

Synopsis:
With The Music Room (Jalsaghar), Satyajit Ray brilliantly evokes the crumbling opulence of the world of a fallen aristocrat (the beloved actor Chhabi Biswas) desperately clinging to a fading way of life. His greatest joy is the music room in which he has hosted lavish concerts over the years—now a shadow of its former vivid self. An incandescent depiction of the clash between tradition and modernity, and a showcase for some of India’s most popular musicians of the day, The Music Room is a defining work by the great Bengali filmmaker

Special Features:
•New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
•Satyajit Ray (1984), a feature documentary by Shyam Benegal that chronicles Ray’s career through interviews with the filmmaker, family photographs, and extensive clips from his films
•New interviews with Satyajit Ray biographer Andrew Robinson and filmmaker Mira Nair
•Excerpt from a 1981 French roundtable discussion with Ray, film critic Michel Ciment, and director Claude Sautet
•New and improved English subtitle translation
•PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Philip Kemp, a 1963 essay by Ray on the film’s location, and a 1986 interview with the director about the film’s music