Agantuk - The visitor

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Movie
German title Agantuk - The visitor
Original title আগন্তুক
(Agantuk)
Country of production India
original language Bengali
Publishing year 1991
length 115 minutes
Rod
Director Satyajit Ray
script Satyajit Ray
production National Film Development Corporation
music Satyajit Ray
camera Barun Raha
cut Dulal Dutta
occupation

Agantuk - The Visitor ( Bengali : আগন্তুক , Āgantuk ) is an Indian feature film directed by Satyajit Ray from 1991.

action

Anila Bose receives a letter from her uncle Manomohan Mitra, who went abroad 35 years ago and has never written to her, announcing his visit. He would like to spend a week in his hometown Kolkata and she is the only remaining relative from whom he hopes for the Bengali hospitality. Anila is willing to take him in, but her husband Sudhindra is skeptical that he is not a fraud. Before he arrives, they lock away everything valuable.

Manomohan Mitra impresses with an excellent linguistic style of his Bengali, which only increases Sudhindra's suspicions, he asks his wife to show Mitra's passport. Mitra notices Sudhindra's distrust and amazes him when he hands him his passport with the remark that such documents can be forged quickly these days and that he needs to take more time to find out whether he is a real or a fake uncle. The son Satyaki is enthusiastic about the stories of the world-traveled Mitra. He tells with the experience from his work as an ethnologist in almost all parts of the world. Since Sudhindra does not trust himself to be able to judge Mitra on his own, he has invited his friend, the lawyer Prithwish Sengupta, to the "test" for the next evening.

On the first evening, however, the befriended couple Rakshit invite themselves; the man is an actor by trade. Mitra immediately notices that he should be tested and plays along with the game. Towards the end of the evening he asks directly: How do you find me, uncle yes or no?

Sudhindra and Anila find out at night that the uncle should actually still have an inheritance, but that he could have been declared dead a long time ago. Sudhindra learns the next day through his research with former family lawyer Tridib Mukherjee that an inheritance for Manomohan has been set aside.

The second exam in the evening with the lawyer Sengupta is catastrophic. Manomohan can apply his vast knowledge first. They discuss religion (Mitra does not believe in things that create barriers between people as religion does), God (Mitra finds it increasingly difficult to believe in the "perfect" in the modern world), technological progress (Mitra is skeptical of modern science and technology). Then he tells his résumé: he was always the best in school, then lived for five years with Indian tribes ( Santal , Kol , Bhil , Naga , Munda , etc.), then went to Europe to study anthropology and lived among Indians and has written reports for the UN on this. A dispute develops between Sengupta and Mitra over civilization. Mitra thinks primitive peoples are civilized because they already have all the signs of civilization and that the homeless in the streets of New York, begging for food, seem far less civilized in his eyes. When asked, Mitra regrets not being able to eat human flesh because it shouldn't taste bad. Sengupta loses her nerve and asks Mitra to identify himself or to leave the house of the Boses.

Anila and Sudhindra Bose, both now convinced of the authenticity of their uncle, are sad to find his room empty the next morning. They go to the executor Sital Sarkar and find out that Mitra is with him. The old man says that he last saw Mitra 35 years ago and has just tried in vain to entertain him, and that, to his amazement, Mitra introduced himself by showing his passport. Sudhindra Bose is ashamed.

They meet him in a neighboring Santal village to which Mitra has withdrawn and ask him to come back - he agrees that they have come to him. Together they watch a tribal dance of the Santals.

Back in Kolkata, saying goodbye to Mitra is forgiving. He leaves a letter that should not be opened until after his departure. In it he announced that he would give his entire inheritance to his niece Anila and included a check.

background

The last film in Satyajit Ray's work can be counted among his best works; it is the film adaptation of one of his own short stories. The film remains interesting even when viewed several times. While one can share the uncle's doubts about the authenticity of the uncle without knowing the outcome of the story, the uncle's endeavor to prove his genuineness is at the center of attention in a repeated view.

Satyajit Ray speaks his own thoughts through Mitra's words - against narrow-mindedness and limits of thought and action of any kind as well as a pronounced doubt about religion, progress and civilization.

The following year the director received the Oscar for his life's work .

Awards

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