Directed by the visionary Bengali filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak, The
Cloud-Capped Star tells the story of a family that has been
uprooted by the Partition of India and come to depend on its
eldest daughter, the self-sacrificing Neeta (Supriya Choudhury).
She watches helplessly as her own hopes and desires are pushed
aside time and again by those of her siblings and parents, until
all her chances for happiness evaporate, leaving her crushed and
ailing. Experimenting with off-balance compositions,
discontinuous editing, and a densely layered soundtrack, Ghatak
devised an intellectually ambitious and emotionally devastating
new shape for the melodrama, lamenting the tragedies of Indian
history and the inequities of traditional gender roles while
blazing a formal trail for the generations of Indian filmmakers
who have followed him. BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES • New 2K
digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack • New
conversation between filmmakers Saeed Akhtar Mirza and Kumar
Shahani • Stills gallery of Ghatak family photographs curated by
writer and photographer Nabarupa Bhattacharjee • New English
subtitle translation • PLUS: An essay by film scholar Ira Bhaskar
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The Cloud Capped Star (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]