Shet Patharer Thala (1992)

1992 157’ col Bengali d/sc Prabhat Roy pc Gope Movies p Shankar and Geeta Gope st Bani Basu c Girish Padidhar m R.D. Burman lp Aparna Sen, Sabhyasachi Chakraborty, Indrani Haldar, Rituparna, Bhaskar Bannerjee, Dipankar Dey, Dilip, Haradhan, Meenakshi, Lili Chakraborty, Monu, R.D. Burman A successful melodrama about the dutiful wife and mother Bandara who becomes a widow (Sen). The subsequent conflict between her and her in-laws stems from her son’s refusal to see his mother as a widow whereas the family insists on her adhering to all the traditional, oppressive trappings of widowhood. She has to leave the family home and take a job. After a while, she forms a new relationship with an artist (Dey), but the by-now adult son cannot accept his mother as an autonomous, sexual being either, encouraged in his reactionary attitudes by his girlfriend (Haldar) and her villainous mother. The film resolves the problems, not by focussing on the issue of a woman’s right to her own identity, but by emphasising and glorifying motherhood.