The Music Room (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray] [2017]

Like Yasujiro Ozu, Satyajit Ray likes to bring his stories slow. And both directors also prefer to show, not tell. Their way of offering cinema creates, to me at least, the experience of not clearly knowing what the movie, the story, is all about, but at the end offers a lot of meaning and leaves a lot to think about. Their beauty is a slow involvement filled with little 'visual' moments that give a lot of meaning to the story. They tell their stories with little symbolic ideas and illustrate with small visual happenings, there's a lot in the details.The Music Room, as i understood from the very interesting interviews in the extras, was originated from Rays love for classical Indian music. For many artists music is an important resource of inspiration. And a beautiful visual story has grown out of that.The story? Filmed in old black & white in a Bengal antique setting at the horizon-wide banks of the Ganga river delta, about unavoidable change, the end of an old traditional aristocratic line (blood), rich with heritage but impoverished with capital, for a new generation with money but no heritage and history yet, but the wish to join the prestigious taste for the old classics. Change, beautifully shown in the famous image of the 'modern' truck that passes a silent waiting tired elephant on a dusty road.We cannot but accept and adapt to change, but we hold and long to the classics.The beautiful old, the ugly sometimes unavoidable, unacceptable new.The dance made me think at the equal magic dance in Jean Renoir's 'The River', issued by BFIThe interviews help understanding some context, some to westerners unknown symbolism, but the story itself needs no explanation and will certainly awake different feelings in every viewer.Nice interview with Mira Nair, director of 'Monsoon Wedding' and the still powerful, highly recommended! 'Salaam Bombay', that second title also available with BFI.'The Music Room' is, together with 'The Apu Trilogy' frequently found in movie recommendation lists and are both available in the Criterion collection.Don't get scared and frustrated with the video quality at the beginning, there is some flickering and the transfer sometimes looks a little neglected. Don't expect pristine remastered image. But to my taste it all enhances the atmosphere and old Bengal cinema style.I watched 'The Music Room' about a week ago and its effects still live with me.Beautiful!

Ray's critically acclaimed masterpiece. Widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time.

At present this 1958 Bengali Cinema Black and White rarity is only available on BLU RAY in the States.But therein lies a problem for UK and European buyers…The US issue is REGION-A LOCKED - so it WILL NOT PLAY on most UK Blu Ray players unless they're chipped to play 'all' regions (which the vast majority aren't).Don’t confuse BLU RAY players that have multi-region capability on the 'DVD' front – that won’t help.Until such time as someone else gives “The Music Room” a REGION B and C release – check your BLU RAY player has the capacity to play REGION A – before you buy the pricey Criterion issue…

Essential viewing.

Given as a gift, the recipient has just tried to watch it, in several devices, and the DVD doesn't work!! Very disappointed, and I am also outside the returns window now! An unhappy customer.

A brilliant film from one of the masters of cinema. Ray evokes the troubled fall of aging musician in stunning B&W photography with great pathos.Ignore the 'review ' posted on 8 Sept by someone disgruntled with the disc not the movie. The film is a classic & if you like Ray's films, foreign language & the evocation of other cultures you might well find this movie well worth watching.

It will not play on my multi-system blue ray DVD player! I know there are different systems but surely you would not be selling this without the requisite information? Very disappointed not to be able to watch it. Would like to replace it for one which will play on my player.

When you hear about the Indian cinema, you usually remember some kitschy and dated Bollywood movies who thrilled some mass audiences. The first wide known Indian director who made serious and ”down to earth” movies was Satyajit Ray, a true model for other humanist filmmakers like Andrei Tarkovsky or Ingmar Bergman. He succeded in creating a real world, not a dream one (like in Raj Kapoor's bagatelles), an cinematographic universe pointed with a high artistic value. His ”Trilogy of Apu” was a revelation for the Occidental European World, highly praised by critics like George Sadoul or Francois Truffaut, but, in my point of view, his alltime masterwork is ”Jalsaghar” (The Music Room), a very nuanced observation of greed and vanity accompanied by a folkloric soundtrack, an element which give this movie an exotic and eerie atmosphere. ”Jalsaghar” was the Indian movie who mixed the best the musical folklore with a detalied critique of snoberry and upper class views. ”The Music Room” touches accents that are not often found in the neorealist cinema, and, due to its complexity, remains a veritable gem of the seventh art, a reason for its well-mastered Criterion realase. About the Blu-Ray transfer, I don't say much. It's like all Criterions, a celebration for eye and soul, and maybe one of the most valuable movies from the Criterion UK series. Definitely, this edition is a must for every World Cinema fan, ”Jalsaghar” being a high class movie despite his simple action and narrow accesibility. It is a beginning in exploration of Ray's movies and a work of art which leads to the next director's tour de force, the philosophic essay ”World of Apu”.