The best Soumitra Chatterjee’s drama movies

Ashoke Gupta is an idealistic doctor working in a town near Calcutta. He discovers that the water at a popular temple is the source of an outbreak of typhoid and hepatitis. In order to save lives, he risks his career to try and call attention to this polluted water source, while a local group of building contractors attempt to discredit him in various ways.

Apu is a jobless ex-student dreaming vaguely of a future as a writer. An old college friend talks him into a visit up-country to a village wedding...

In 1870s India, Charulata (Madhabi Mukherjee) is an isolated, artistically inclined woman who sees little of her busy journalist husband, Bhupati (Sailen Mukherjee). Realizing that his wife is alienated and unhappy, he convinces his cousin, Amal (Soumitra Chatterjee), to spend time with Charulata and nourish her creative impulses. Amal is a fledgling poet himself, and he and Charulata bond over their shared love of art. But over time a sexual attraction develops, with heartbreaking results.

Amitabha Roy is a Calcutta-based scriptwriter, driving around in the country to collect material for a film. His vehicle breaks down in a small town. A tea planter, Bimal Gupta, offers hospitality for the night. Amitabha is forced to accept the offer as he has no alternative.

A film inspired by the life of Subir Banirjee who played the boy Apu in "Pather Panchali", the first of the Apu Trilogy. and did not make another film. His life has some uncanny resemblances to Apu's adulthood.

Four friends from Calcutta who have very different personalities make a holiday excursion into the country, to a tiny village in the state of Bihar where they set themselves up in a bungalow. A series of minor events, all connected to their respective reactions to their new environment, reveals their characters more deeply.

When the movie opens, a woman is recalling the events that molded her perspective on the world. Years ago, her husband, a wealthy Western-educated landowner, challenged tradition by providing her with schooling, and inviting her out of the seclusion in which married women were kept, to the consternation of more conservative relatives. Meeting her husband's visiting friend from college, a leader of an economic rebellion against the British, she takes up his political cause, despite her husbands warnings. As the story progresses, the relationship between the woman and the visitor becomes more than platonic, and the political battles, pitting rich against poor and Hindu against Moslem, turn out not to be quite as simple as she had first thought.

The story revolves around a taxi driver, Narsingh, who attempts to reinvent his life by visiting his native place, but instead gets embroiled in a local Marwari businessman's smuggling and human trafficking business.

Allan (Hugh Grant) is an engineer working in 1930s Calcutta. He is invited to stay with the family of his boss, Narendra Sen (Soumitra Chatterjee) which includes his wife, Indira (Shabana Azmi) and daughter Gayatri (Supriya Pathak). Gayatri and Allan become romantically involved leading to tragedy.

Gangacharan is the new Brahmin of a village, where he assumes various duties: teaching, organizing religious events, and trying to prevent epidemics. But in that year 1943, war is raging (as reminded by the planes occasionally heard flying over the countryside), and a major famine is under way. As food shortages reach catastrophic proportions, Gangacharan attempts to preserve his privileged situation, while his generous wife, Ananga, conversely tries to help and support the community.

'Sraboner Dhara' focuses on the issues of the youth and the emotional attachment felt by the medical caregivers of the older generation.

The Sanyals are a large extended family composed of the nonagenarian grandfather (Haradhan Banerjee), his son (Ranjit Mallick), daughter-in-law (Laboni Sarkar) and their children of whom two, a daughter (Koel Mallick) and a son (Rishi Kaushik), live together in a mansion in Bhawanipur. There seems to be more servants in their house than family members, extending the virtues and parameters of the ideal ‘joint’ family. The film starts with everyone being excited about the return of the elder son (Babul Supriyo) from the U.S., where he had gone for work. However, all hell breaks loose when he returns with a wife (Rituparna Sengupta) and her child from a former marriage in tow.

The life of a woman happily married to the son of an upper-class family in 19th century Bengal is turned upside down when her father-in-law has a vision that she is the Goddess Kali returned to earth. He convinces her to fulfill her role as a living deity and transform her house into a temple.

'Teen Kanya' is an anthology film based upon short stories by Rabindranath Tagore, as a tribute on the author's centenary. The title means "Three Daughters", and the film's original Indian release contained three stories, with three central female characters linking the stories together. 'The Postmaster' concerns an orphan girl who grows attached to the postmaster she is caring for after he teaches her to read and write. 'Monihara' is a supernatural tale about a woman obsessed with the jewels her husband buys for her. 'Samapti' follows a young man who falls for an unconventional girl from his new village instead of his arranged bride, the daughter of a respectable family. The international release did not include 'Monihara', and was released as 'Dui Kanya', or "Two Daughters".

On a family visit, a young man and his girlfriend set out to discover why his eccentric uncle has been mysteriously confined to one room for years.

Jijibisha tells a simple story of how love can overcome all societal pressures and transcend all stereotypes. Problem arises when the film, in itself, fails to do that — transcend stereotypes, we mean.