Wes Anderson names Satyajit Ray’s ‘Charulata’ among road-trip favourites

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Wes Anderson names Satyajit Ray’s ‘Charulata’ among road-trip favourites

Photo: Collected

Hollywood filmmaker Wes Anderson has named Satyajit Ray’s “Charulata” among his favourite films to watch on a road trip. He also admitted that he ‘stole’ the film’s iconic binocular scenes for his 2012 film “Moonrise Kingdom”.

Anderson made the remarks during a recent episode of Criterion Collection’s “Mobile Closet Picks!” video series. In the episode, he was asked to recommend films from the Criterion Collection for cinephiles to enjoy.

The filmmaker began by saying that he already has his own Criterion Closet at home. However, as he was preparing for a family road trip across America, he visited the mobile unit to choose some films for the journey.

Among his picks was a physical copy of Ray’s “Charulata”, also known as “The Lonely Wife”. Anderson described it as one of Ray’s best films and spoke about the influence of the legendary Indian filmmaker on his own work.

“I stole many things for my own movies from Ray, and from this one (‘Charulata’) — the protagonist spends much of her time looking out from the rooms in her house, with binoculars. And for my film ‘Moonrise Kingdom’, we have got a lot of binocular shots — only because of Satyajit Ray, one of my favourite great masters of cinema,” he said.
Anderson also selected Alfred Hitchcock’s “The 39 Steps”, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s “The Red Shoes”, Ernst Lubitsch’s “Heaven Can Wait” and “Design for Living”, Preston Sturges’s “The Lady Eve”, John Ford’s “Stagecoach” and Gints Zilbalodis’s “Flow”.

This is not the first time Anderson has spoken about Ray’s influence on his films. In earlier interviews, he admitted to lifting a memory game scene ‘wholesale’ from Ray’s 1970 film “Aranyer Din Ratri” for his 2023 film “Asteroid City”.

A longtime admirer of Satyajit Ray, Anderson also dedicated “The Darjeeling Limited” to the Indian master. He has frequently used music from Ray’s films in his own work, describing his borrowing from the filmmaker as a form of respectful homage.