Saat Pake Bandha

[Spoilers, the biggest of which will be marked in situ. Also, I don't know why the images are different tones—they're from the same DVD played on the same laptop.] It's 50-odd years old, but Saat Pake Bandha resonantes with realness. From its meet-ordinary (crankily, on a bus) and passive-agressive glaring over newspapers to its dissolution contained in a small apartment, lives are changed and ruined without any hint of spectacle or grandeur. The story suggests that, as in our world of non-scripted people and situations, the responsibility for its sadness is widely distributed. The central character, Archana (Suchitra Sen), is a bright student who marries teacher* Sukhendu (Soumitra Chatterjee) despite seeming to have reservations about him. I say "seeming" because I don't think there's any actual dialogue from her about her feelings for him before their marriage, and when her father picks up on their budding romance, her face does not exhib