Late Review: Four Chapters (Chaturanga)

Suman Mukhopadhyay’s Four Chapters (Chaturanga) is a film that deals with timeless issues: religion vs. reason, the status of women, and the dichotomy of Western ideas vs. Eastern ideas. Based on a novel by Novel-prize winning Rabindranath Tagore, the film is about Sachish, a man wrestling with the numerous ideas and worldviews life has to offer, and ultimately the inability to really follow just one. What makes Chaturanga of such interest is its ability to act as heuristic device for discussion on such issues; much of this is credited to the original author. At a running time of over two hours, Suman Mukhopadhyay’s latest is a rare beast in that it is split into four chapters, the first two of which seem to lead nowhere, and the last two of which have some particularly potent and revelatory scenes that make sense of the first half of the film. Read more »