7.8 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
The lonely wife of a newspaper editor falls in love with her visiting cousin-in-law, who shares her love for literature.
Starring: Soumitra Chatterjee, Madhabi Mukherjee, Shailen Mukherjee, Tarapada Basu, Nilotpal DeyForeign | 100% |
Drama | 88% |
Romance | 25% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
Bengali: LPCM 2.0
English
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region B (locked)
Movie | 5.0 | |
Video | 5.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Winner of Best Director and OCIC Awards at the Berlin International Film Festival, Satyajit Ray's "Charulata" (1964) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of British distributors Artificial Eye. There are no supplemental features on this release. In Bengali, with optional English subtitles for the main feature. Region-B "locked".
In the beautiful cage
Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Satyajit Ray's Charulata arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of British distributors Artificial Eye.
This release uses a high-definition transfer which has been sourced from the same recent restoration of Charulata undertaken by RDB Entertainments and supervised by Kamal Bansal and Varsha Bansal which Criterion had access to when they prepared their Blu-ray release of the film for the U.S. market. Needless to say, the two releases have virtually identical characteristics.
Excluding some marginal discrepancies in the brightness levels, and they really are so small that they do not in any way affect the overall look of the film, I could not spot any important differences to address in this review. Clarity and depth are excellent. The beach footage again looks exceptional (compare screencaptures #5 from the two reviews), while the close-ups convey the same wonderful fluidity. The blacks, whites, and the variety of grays remain well balanced throughout the entire film. Furthermore, the same inherited sharpness fluctuations that I noticed on the Criterion release are also present here. (You can see what some of them look like if you click on screencapture #9). Image stability is also essentially the same. There are no traces of excessive degraining corrections. Problematic sharpening adjustments have not been applied either. Lastly, there are no serious compression anomalies to report in this review. All in all, I think that this is a very solid presentation of Charulata that is guaranteed to please its fans. (Note: This is a Region-B "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-B or Region-Free PS3 or SA in order to access its content).
There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: Bengali LPCM 2.0. For the record, Artificial Eye have provided optional English subtitles for the main feature.
The lossless track effectively opens up the film in all the right places. During the dream sequence, in particular, where the music has an important role that sound is absolutely beautiful (the dream sequence beings at approximately 01.12.00). The dialog is also clean, stable, and easy to follow. For the record, there are no pops, problematic background hiss, audio dropouts, or distortions to report in this review. The English translation is excellent, but it isn't identical to the one used on the Criterion release.
Unfortunately, there are no supplemental features to be found on this Blu-ray release.
Artificial Eye's Blu-ray release of Satyajit Ray's beautiful film Charulata is an excellent alternative for people residing in Region-B territories. It does not have any supplemental features, but it uses a high-definition transfer that has been sourced from the same recent restoration of the film Criterion had access to. Consider adding Charulata to your collections, folks. It is one of director Ray's very best films. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
(Still not reliable for this title)
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