Kapurush: The most underappreciated film of Satyajit Ray’s career predates Past Lives by decades and is even more emotional

Post-credits scene: Satyajit Ray’s 70-minute romantic drama is a tightly wound, exquisitely written, and masterfully performed tribute to silent resilience

In Satyajit Ray’s Kapurush (The Coward), a lonely screenwriter encounters his previous girlfriend after becoming abandoned in the wilderness. Charulata stars Madhabi Mukherjee and Soumitra Chatterjee as the former lovers, who are ordered by fate to bring their relationship to an end. Amitabha Roy is the scriptwriter, and in the film’s wonderfully filmed opening scene, he learns that his broken down car will take at least two days to repair. The lonely tea estate where he finds himself lacks a variety of motels and repair stores, putting Amitabha in a difficult situation.

But the tea estate’s manager, a noisy, pipe-smoking caricature named Bimal Gupta, overhears Amitabha’s talk at the repair shop and offers to host him in his bungalow while his car is repaired. Amitabha agrees, but the moment he walks at Bimal’s residence, he realizes he is married to Karuna, the woman he fumbled with some years ago. It’s as if he has seen a ghost. They exchange a quiet gaze — the first of many — as Ray’s tightly strung, gorgeously written, and expertly performed domestic drama unravels. Kapurush is possibly his most underrated film, one that Ray felt deserved a much greater reaction than it received.

In many ways, Amitabha believes she is also entitled to better treatment. In the first few seconds he spends alone with Karuna, he wonders why she is treating him so coldly, as if he expected her to leap into his arms the instant she saw him, like the heroine in one of his films. But all she does is avert her eyes and leave the room, refusing to face his persistent gaze throughout the evening. This chill also pervades the scene in which Karuna enters the guest quarters where Amitabha has been sent to bring him a towel and some water.

It’s a tremendously dramatic showdown. Karuna suspects that he engineered the encounter. And who knows. Amitabha might have devised a million identical strategies throughout the years. As fate would have it, the reunion he so desperately desired occurred by happenstance rather than calculation. But Karuna’s thinking otherwise upsets him just as much as her apparent hostile indifference toward him. There is a good reason why Ray gave Amitabha the very derogatory epithet of ‘Coward’, as we will discover throughout the 70-minute film.

Despite the short length, Kapurush finds time to introduce two extensive flashbacks that convey some basic information about Karuna and Amitabha’s previous incarnations. She presented him with a life-changing decision many years ago, when they were still together. Karuna informed him that she was being sent away by her disapproving family and urgently proposed that they elope. Amitabha procrastinated, and his indecision cost him the love of his life. “You don’t need time; you need something else,” she added, lowering the metaphorical mike as she exited. And just like that, in a time of intense sadness, she expelled him from her life.

In the present, he tries to trick Karuna by telling her that he hasn’t fallen love anybody else in all this time. Their dynamic is unlike the one shared by the two protagonists in the recent Oscar-nominated film Past Lives. Unlike director Celine Song, Ray is unable to conceal his scorn for the needy male suitor. Viewers of Past Lives may have sympathized with Hae Sung, who made a poor attempt to reconcile with his former flame a decade after they split up. In Kapurush, Ray gives the spectator little leeway in deciding who they sympathize with, particularly after the first flashback.

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He establishes this subversion very early on, during Amitabha and Bimal’s first meeting. On the way to the bungalow, when Amitabha had no idea Karuna was just around the corner, a curious Bimal mentioned the essential principle of love films: boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. However, this norm is deeply embedded in objectification. The boy is the only one who takes an active role in this situation, losing and recovering the female as if she were a parcel. Karuna most definitely isn’t. In Kapurush, she can choose who she wants to be with.

Ray doesn’t spare the pretentious Bimal either. When he is not listening to Rabindra sangeet, he hums the national anthem to himself. Not because of patriotism, but possibly because he likes the song. Later, he complains complacently about the caste system while eating on a slice of bread handed to him by a turbaned employee. What a clever bit of character work. Bimal appears to have grown bitter with time; he drinks excessively and appears unaware — let alone appreciative — of his wife’s artistic abilities. Ray’s camera moves sympathetically towards Karuna as he discusses the dullness of plantation life. Of all the individuals she had to settle down with, he was the one. All of this serves to emphasize how unpardonable Amitabha’s previous deeds were, and to suggest that he will most likely bear the consequences of his mistake for the rest of his life.

As in Past Lives, there is a scene in Kapurush where all three characters sit down for a drink. Crucially, Bimal remains blissfully unaware of Amitabha and Karuna’s common history, the tension in the room failing to permeate his thick head. In Past Lives, the green flag husband realized that he was the third wheel, at least temporarily. And so he silently backed off, not because he had surrendered defeat, but because he was completely confident in his relationship; he knew his wife would not abandon him. In Kapurush, this scenario is fraught with uncertainty. Will the tactless Amitabha blab about his love for Karuna in front of Bimal, and will the armour she has built around herself show its cracks? It’s fun and provocative, tense but alluring.

Chatterjee portrays Amitabha as a smirking fool, whereas Mukherjee’s confident performance would not be out of place in a film noir. Kapurush, unlike most films, relies heavily on the faces of its two leads. Ray’s camera isn’t just admiring Mukherjee; it’s absolutely in love with her. His blocking is precise, authoritative, strong, and musical. Never before has a shot of someone pacing behind a closed door been so full of need. Karuna, definitely cursing the crap that life has thrown at her. Amitabha is also struggling to sleep on this side of the door. He wants some tablets, but he lacks the nerve to knock on Karuna’s door, fearing a confrontation. In the film’s closing scene, Karuna requests her medicines back, symbolically yielding to her miserable fate. Only Ray could have made such a gracious surrender.