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| Subhendu Chatterjee, Samit Bhanja, Soumitra Chatterjee and Rabi Ghosh in Days and Nights in the Forest |
Cast: Soumitra Chatterjee, Subhendu Chatterjee, Samit Bhanja, Rabi Ghosh, Pahari Sanyal, Sharmila Tagore, Kaberi Bose, Simi Garewal, Aparna Sen. Screenplay: Satyajit Ray, based on a novel by Sunil Gangopadhyay. Cinematography: Soumendu Roy. Production design: Bransi Chandragupta. Film editing: Dulal Dutta. Music: Satyajit Ray.
Four men from the city take off for the country in search of adventure and encounter the unexpected. Satyajit Ray's Days and Night in the Forest has a setup similar to Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972). In both films, the city guys are condescending to the rurals with unexpected consequences. But Ray's amusing, low-key story is focused on character more than action. Ashim (Soumitra Chatterjee), Sanjoy (Subhendu Chatterjee), Hari (Samit Bhanja), and Shekhar (Rabi Bhosh) leave Kolkata for the district of Palamu in eastern India, their heads full of tales about beautiful tribal women and peaceful forests. They're all bachelors, though Hari has just had a bruising breakup with his girlfriend. They hire a local boy to guide them to a vacation home, where they bribe the caretaker to let them stay there although they don't have a reservation. After symbolically severing their ties to civilization by burning a newspaper from back home, they go out to a village to get drunk and flirt with women, one of whom, Duli (Simi Garewal), hits it off with Hari. The next day, they discover that one of their neighbors is the owner of a country home who is currently being visited by his daughter, Aparna (Sharmila Tagore) and her widowed sister-in-law, Jaya (Kaberi Bose). Suddenly their decision to go native takes a turn in another direction, when Ashim is attracted to Aparna and Sanjoy to Jaya. Only Shekhar is left to his own devices. With his usual insight into human nature, Ray beautifully produces a satire on urban attitudes and a comedy of manners that transcends both genres.
