Although The Adversary is not well known, it is one of Satyajit Ray’s major films. He made it fast in 1970, when his teeming home city of Calcutta was on the point of violent revolution as a result of the Maoist-inspired Naxalite movement. Street killings and bombings were then an everyday occurrence, and the film captures this explosive atmosphere –through its central character, an unemployed and increasingly desperate graduate but also through its fractured and elliptical story telling and editing influenced by 1960s Godard movies. ‘Certainly the first truly contemporary film made here’, said Ray, ‘and basically though not blatantly pro-revolution – because I feel nothing else can set the country up on its feet.’ But the Bengali politics of the time has not dated the film, because its protagonist – like Malcolm McDowell’s character in If…. – stands for all angry young men everywhere, who try to remain individuals under crushing pressures to conform. Personally, I love it for its mixed humanity, humour, romance and profundity. One nightmare scene, in which a bunch of listlessly waiting interviewees turn into skeletons, is probably the most hard-hitting sequence in Ray’s amazingly varied oeuvre.
This first film in Satyajit Ray's 'Calcutta trilogy' is considered to be one of his best late films. In it, a young man, newly graduated from college, is unable to find meaningful employment. He lives in a crowded family apartment with his widowed mother and siblings. Family friction, together with his failure to find work, places an unbearable strain on him, causing him to hallucinate. The film's tension is abetted by the impersonal setting of Calcutta, and builds to a devastating climax.
Edvard Munch (Masters of Cinema)
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The Adversary
