Kapurush / The Coward (1965)

Amitabha Roy: "All this palm reading was just an excuse to hold your hand."

By Satyajit Ray
With Soumitra Chatterjee, Madhabi Mukherjee and Haradhan Bannerjee

I have enjoyed all the movies from Satyajit Ray that I've had the chance to watch, I haven't seen many, but they were always really well directed. This one seemed fairly unknown but reading the story line I wanted to see it.

Amitabha Roy is a young scriptwriter who is taking time off from Calcutta to see the country and hopefully get inspired to finish the script he is working on. When his car breaks down and the local garage is incapable of repairing it, he is offered shelter, until the next train, by a wealthy tea plantation owner. The man is quite talkative and appears to want to discuss everything with Amitabha. The surprise is total when Amitabha enters the man's house and sees Karuna who was his only love but the one he failed to take a decision and had to let her go. We then learn to know about the past story between them while Amitabha tries to recover from the mistakes of his past while remaining himself in his cowardice.

As it is expected with Satyajit Ray, the filming is absolutely spot on and expect for a few scenes that have a few blurry points, which I would blame on the film's conservation, it is such a beautiful black and white atmosphere that is depicted. Faces come out to express more than dialogues would.

The character of Amitabha Roy is really interesting and we never know whether to pity him, feel for him or root for him. It was quite relevant to me at least because I consider myself a coward, much like the way Amitabha behaved. It deals with missed opportunities and the impossibility to make a decision when pushed against the wall. It's not blatant cowardice, but the kind that creeps on you and suffocates you, a metaphor that was also used as we see Amitabha sweating and having sleeping issues when he realizes he is so close to Karuna again.

As the movie deals mostly with the three characters, we feel the awkwardness of the husband, Bimal. He is talkative, laughs too often, criticizes everyone, drinks too much but ultimately, even though we would like to hate him for standing in the way of the young couple, we can't find him a real fault. I wouldn't be able to say whether the movie is a critique of arranged marriages or the impossible love between castes.

Maybe the movie doesn't pick a side and allows the viewer to dive through and decide which is the best option. Even the ending was clever. However, the movie is quite short and we barely have the time to gather enough information on the couple through a few, but key elements, flashbacks. As Bimal talks and talks, we observe the, now defunct, couple and we don't actually care about what Bimal says. The story and dialogues are not as striking as the other movies from Ray's that I've seen, but the directing work and clever mystery makes up for it.

I liked: Interesting main character with dilemmas and flaws. Brilliant shots and close-ups.

I disliked: Deserved a little more background. Simple dialogues and script.

78/100
I don't know if the term romance would apply here because it is quite an original take, but I liked this male character who is scared and lacks the assertiveness required to make decisions.