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Thursday, May 16, 2002
9:15pm
Monihara
In honor of the centenary of Rabindranath Tagore's birth, Ray made not only the documentary Rabindranath Tagore, but also a feature based on three Tagore stories. When the film was released in the West, the middle story, Monihara, was deleted for reasons of length, and what had been Three Daughters was shown in the U.S. as Two Daughters. The first story, The Postmaster, concerns a young man from Calcutta who lands a job in a remote village. He is looked after by an orphan girl, and his eventual departure causes an unexpected tragedy. The conclusion, Samapti, is a comedy, a kind of Indian Taming of the Shrew, in which the village tomboy revolts against an arranged marriage on the night of her wedding. The missing middle segment, Monihara (Bejewelled Obsession), will be shown in the second part of our program; it is a chilling study of a childless woman's infatuation with jewelry, and her return after death to her frightened husband.
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