The Coward
(Kapurush)

When he accepts the invitation of Bimal, a tea planter who offers to lodge him in his bungalow after his car breaks down, Amir unexpectedly finds that his host’s wife is Karuna, a woman he once loved and then abandoned. This trap of coincidence awakens the past and, in the space of twenty-four excruciating hours reminiscent of a relaxing break in the country, it paints the portrait of a cowardly man, a wounded woman and their opposite destinies. Cruel, ironic and dully tragic, The Coward reshapes the actor-duo of Charulata (1964) as if to concentrate in the simplicity of argument and concision the most penetrating and scathing part of this key film in Ray’s cinema. FM