SoftInloveRox Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

SpecialsTarget Disturbing yet enthralling

Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Fulke Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

gavin6942 Depicts the end days of a decadent zamindar (landlord) in Bengal, and his efforts to uphold his family prestige even when faced with economic adversity.After the box office failure of "Aparajito", Ray desperately needed a hit film and decided to make a film based on both a popular piece of literature and a film that would incorporate Indian music. It was the first film to extensively incorporate classical Indian music and dancing.For the life of me, I haven't found an Indian film -- classic or contemporary -- that I really liked. The "Apu trilogy" does nothing for me, and Bollywood is a disaster. But "Music Room" may be the first exception... and it is precisely because of the traditional music. The cinematography is really good, but that music!

jmbwithcats Music and passion without those to share it with is without value, dried leaves rustling along the ground and pettiness to win burns them...It's Indian, but I wouldn't call it Bollywood, it's more like Ingmar Bergman in its depth. The story is about a wealthy man whose life is music and putting on parties for friends, but he doesn't really enjoy the music he just does it to one up his neighbors who he feels in competition with... his wife and son go out in a storm and die not to return, and he becomes a recluse in his castle, and at the end of his life he puts on one more final concert. What I glean from it, is a cautionary tale about how we live our lives, to have passion, and to share it openly with our loved ones and not to neglect them for pettiness. The film is amazing as a cautionary tale, but I felt it could have shown some form of redemption in the end, rather than racing out to regain something, out of fear for his own mortality, more so a sense of humility and love for his family he lost, neglected all that time... I don't feel we see that in the film.

rgcustomer There are many places where this film could have ended, and it would have been a better film, such as (a) after the storm, (b) with the house in ruins, even (c) after the triumphant final performance. Instead, after a mostly serious film, an absurd ending is quickly tacked on, insulting the audience.Since so many people are promoting this film, I'm going to dwell on the negative, although keep in mind that I do think it's worth watching.Among the several weaknesses of the film are: (1) the man's relationship to his wife/courtesan is not made clear. She appears out of nowhere, has a few scenes, and disappears never to be seen again. but we're told she survived the trip. (2) the man's relationship to his son, whom he seems to genuinely miss when he's gone, although perhaps more out of a blood-line legacy thing than a personal relationship. (3) everyone's relationship to the nouveau-riche down the block is unclear -- why do they attack his car? Why doesn't he initially like the music? Is he just as lazy as the hero of our story? A particular annoyance is the filmmaker's determination to dwell on every last note of the very grating and entirely unnecessary music. It doesn't move the plot. It doesn't reveal character. It does set the scene, which is good. But in some cases, particularly during the dance, the singing and instruments are heard even though the singers and musicians are clearly not making noise. Anyway, the music is local flavour, and we get the point after a few minutes. We don't need to be drowned in it. I learned on IMDb that portions of the vocalizations were not words, and that's why they had no subtitles. As closed captions often do, the subtitling should have told us this, so we know that we aren't missing any meaning.I'm ambivalent about the storm. It's described as a cyclone (at least in the English subtitles) which it clearly is not. We have summer storms that look like that where I live on a regular basis, and they're nothing. Yet, I also applaud the use of what appears to be actual lightning in a film. That's pretty rare, and should be encouraged.Despite all that, it's still a good story of obsession, bigotry, and entitlement, living in a past that most could not afford.For what it's worth, and not to say these are reasonable comparisons, but the films that came to my mind watching this one were: any of the Grey Gardens films, and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).

icivoripmav Just to appreciate Roshan Kumari's legendary performance -one of the most mesmerizing dancing sequences ever filmed, this masterpiece deserves a repeated viewing. There is something savage, auto-destructive but also the purest in form about the landlord's passion for music and childish vanity in front of his peers, which made me ponder over the place of music in our society long after the credits end. In the age of MTV and MP3, we are used to the idea of carrying routinely our favorite songs everywhere from streets to bathroom, and it's pity that we hardly experience anymore the authentic ambiance of intimate music gathering such as miraculously acted and filmed in Jalsaghar. Music in other era and other place must have been high point and extra-ordinary moment of community life, source of the spiritual inspiration for civil life as well as its destruction. The decor and lighting of the music room is sumptuous and otherworldly, in perfect contrast with the wearisome monotony of domestic scenes the declining aristocrat is forced to endure.