Created amid the growing social unrest and political violence of India (and the world) post-1969, and specifically responding to Bengal's armed Naxalite radical movement, The Adversary is Ray at his most openly political, yet also Ray at his most compassionate and even humorous. A young college graduate seeks employment (or at least respect) in Calcutta, “that nightmare city” (as Ray described it at the time), and finds neither. Indifferent to joining polite society, his younger brother chooses revolution instead. “This is Ray's funniest, most piercing film,” wrote Pauline Kael; “its humanism is like the quality of Olmi's Il Posto.”