The Adversary (Pratidwandi) - (Mr Bongo Films) (1971) [DVD]

The Adversary has always been one of Ray's most underrated films. Even Ray's greatest admirers rarely regard it as one of his best. They are wrong. In it, Ray was reacting, on one level, to criticisms that he preferred to film safe subjects rather than the turmoil of modern India. More specifically, he was recording his own perceptions of the political and cultural chaos of his hometown Calcutta - Maoist revolts coming on top of (perhaps because of) decades of underinvestment, unemployment, cultural stagnation and industrial unrest. Ray took the plot from a novel by a young, rebellious but not too leftist writer and transformed it into a searing portrait of an introspective, sensitive individual trapped in a decaying city that is apparently on the verge of imploding. The hero Siddhartha is no revolutionary (although his younger brother is) but, unlike his sister, he is not eager to sell out to whatever capitalist opportunities there are. Somewhat like an Apu in a world turned upside down, Siddhartha hangs on to his sanity until the very end, when, through an apparently crazy act, he loses everything but might well have saved his soul. Ray ends the film with a virtuouso juxtaposition of a Hindu funeral chant and the song of a mysterious bird that Siddhartha recalls from his childhood. (Non-Bengali viewers of this disc may miss the former because the subtities do not translate it.) This scene has always seemed to me to be one of Ray's greatest achievements. His films, it used to be said, were full of death; he is also often praised for his life-affirming humanism. Here, those two themes fuse magnificently, making Siddhartha the quintessential Ray hero, perhaps even the summing up of all previous Ray heroes, an individual who can find victory in loss and death in success. This is a common enough theme in Ray's films (The Big City, Company Limited) and stories (Ashamanjababu and His Dog, Patolbabu Filmstar, and many others unknown in the West) but he never expressed it more movingly or pithily than here. The film as a whole is a troubled, edgy, often uncomfortable masterpiece that cries out to be discovered by Ray fans. Those who worship the maker of the Apu trilogy as a cuddly, lyrical humanist are particularly advised to see The Adversary and, to complete their disorientation, the cataclysmic The Middleman.

The print on this disc is fine (not brilliant, but pretty good), but the subtitles are often illegible. The original Bengali titles in Ray's characteristic calligraphy are missing, as is the striking initial image of the film's title as a word, so to speak, at war with itself (the first part of the Bengali word Pratidwandi flashes first and then the second, and I seem to recall that this is repeated whilst Siddhartha broods over the funeral pyre of his father). Anyhow, given the scarcity of good DVDs of Ray's films, one can't be too fussy and on the whole, this is a good disc and worth buying, if only to encourage the vendor to bring out other underrated gems from Ray (please Mr Bongo could we have The Middleman next?)

Set against the city of calcutta in turmoil during the naxalite unrests of the early 70s, an intense film of a young man opposing the circumstances he finds himself in, and trying to come to terms with them at the same time. Brilliant performances by all concerned, set against the backdrop of intense camerawork in black and white, and the old districts of Chowringhee in Calcutta, a memorable film. Ray's characters say so little, yet convey so much! One of Ray's best films, together with "Jana Aranya" (The Middleman)-another masterpeice about an individual's life in the city of Calcutta.

Since Amazon sometimes duplicates reviews from one edition to another, please note that this review refers solely to the Mr Bongo edition: MRBVD05. Further, this review deals solely with the quality of that edition. I refer those seeking a review of the film in its own right to the existing five star reviews by others.

This review exists simply to warn those who share my ignorance of Bengali that the English subtitling in this edition is so poor that, if my experience is anything to judge by, it can impair one's ability to remain absorbed in the film and to appreciate it fully.

The subtitles are often almost illegible and, worse, much of the dialogue is not subtitled at all. One cannot usually expect every sentence to be subtitled but long exchanges are frequently ignored, presumably because they were deemed unimportant by the subtitler. The incompetence of the subtitling is sometimes striking. For example, at one point a short sentence that is spoken in English is rephrased, in the subtitles, no more succinctly than the original. I cannot think what, other than carelessness, could have led to this substitution.

I therefore recommend avoiding the Mr Bongo edition of The Adversary if another is available. At the time of writing, unfortunately, there seems to be no such edition. This being the case, I could hardly suggest avoiding The Adversary but perhaps, if you know what to expect of the subtitles, your first viewing will be more satisfactory than mine.

PS It's worth mentioning, for Bengali speakers, that the subtitles cannot be switched off.