Abhijaan aka The Expedition (1962)
146 min | XviD 544x400 | 1200 kb/s | 128 kb/s mp3 | 23.97 fps | 1.4 GB + 3% recovery
Bengali | Subtitles: English and Spanish .srt | Genre: Drama
A proud taxi driver tries to make his own way in 30s Bengal, but discovers only the corrupt can get to the top. Challenging film by India's finest director.
Abhijan was Satyajit Ray's most popular film in Bengal: a "conscious" effort to communicate with a wider audience. The project was originally conceived by his friends and Ray stepped in when they panicked at the prospect of directing. Ray's mastery turned a starkly conventional plot into a subtly nuanced story which topped the Bengali box office for months.
Set on the Bihar-Bengal border, where Marwari businessmen — a powerful Hindi-dialect community of entrepreneurs much disliked throughout India — and Rajputs of warrior caste (from Rajasthan) have both settled. The central character of Narsingh (Soumitra Chatterjee), is a disillusioned, frequently drunken Rajput reduced in status to an ill-educated taxi driver. Proud and hot-tempered, with a passion for his 1930s Chrysler, Narsingh is offered work transporting tins of ghee for Sukhanram, a shady merchant, and finds himself drawn against his better judgement into trafficking opium. Having failed in everything honest, he has to decide whether or not he will engage in criminal activity to make money.
Los problemas de Narsingh, un imprudente taxista fascinado con su coche, comienzan cuando la policía le retira su permiso de conducir. Un desconocido lo contrata para transportar mercancías y él acepta sin ser consciente de que se está involucrando en una red de contrabando de opio.
Al mismo tiempo, el protagonista se debate entre dos personajes femeninos: Neeli y Gulabi. La primera es el objeto de sus deseos, pero no le corresponde; por otra parte, Gulabi es una buena mujer a la que la fatalidad ha obligado a prostituirse para sobrevivir.
