The Music Room (Blu-Ray)

With The Music Room (Jalsaghar), Satyajit Ray brilliantly evokes the crumbling opulence of the world of a fallen aristocrat (the beloved actor Chhabi Biswas) desperately clinging to a fading way of life. His greatest joy is the music room in which he has hosted lavish concerts over the years—now a shadow of its former vivid self. An incandescent depiction of the clash between tradition and modernity, and a showcase for some of India’s most popular musicians of the day, The Music Room is a defining work by the great Bengali filmmaker.

Special features:
– New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
– Satyajit Ray (1984), a feature documentary by Shyam Benegal that chronicles Ray’s career through interviews with the filmmaker, family photographs, and extensive clips from his films
– New interviews with Satyajit Ray biographer Andrew Robinson and filmmaker Mira Nair
– Excerpt from a 1981 French roundtable discussion with Ray, film critic Michel Ciment, and director Claude Sautet
– New and improved English subtitle translation
– PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Philip Kemp, a 1963 essay by Ray on the film’s location, and a 1986 interview with the director about the film’s music