Satyajit Ray is a master of pared-back social drama that exposes the class and social structure of India.

The Goddess is an understated look at the role of women in 19th century India. Doyamoyee (Sharmila Tagore) lives with her husband Umaprasad’s (Soumitra Chatterjee) family in rural Bengal. They live a comfortable life and, although Doya hasn’t yet had a child, she dotes on her nephew Khoka (Arpan Chowdhury).

Doya is docile and compliant, willing to follow her husband to Calcutta (Kolkata) where he is studying with dreams of a bigger life but also wanting to stay and help look after his amiable father Kalikinkar (Chhabi Biswas). She is also 17, something that we find out later and, when Umaprasad talks about their three year marriage, we understand how marriage at 14 might have shaped her behaviour.

The central conflict of the film arises when Kalikinkar, a devotee of goddess Kali, has an intense dream that Doya is an incarnation of Kali on Earth. The superstition of the culture and the time means that everyone believes this, except perhaps for Umaprasad who knows Doya so well as a mortal woman. The result is that Doya is revered, spending hours of every day being worshipped and having supplicants ask for miracles and bring sick relatives for her to heal.

The belief is so strong that even Doya doesn’t know whether she has powers or not. She is given an impossible choice and we can feel her distress at having to decide who she is going to disappoint. The resolution shows how hopeless the situation was for women at the time and is an indictment of both superstition and patriarchy.

It’s a slow moving film but the black and white cinematography renders the world of Doya into beautiful tones. We might wonder about the rich colours of robes, flowers and furnishings that we are missing but the austerity of the imagery magnifies Doya’s isolation and the darkness of her choices. Although it is set over 100 years ago, the claustrophobic limitations of religion and gender feel depressingly current.

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