The Ritual review
Review:
With The Ritual, Girish Kasaravalli established himself as one of the leading lights of the Indian new wave of the 1970's. A harsh critique of the social traditions of the Brahmins (the highest level of the traditional caste system), it is also an avowedly humanist film that treats each character with respect. Kasaravalli's sympathetic and complex characters are themselves an argument against the arbitrariness of the caste system in which they are caught. His searing, high contrast black and white images give the film's central characters, Yamuna and Nani, the intensity of medieval saints while their actions ground them in the messy, complicated world of human desire. Yamuna is the film's heart, the character whose sins point out the hypocrisy of the system to which her father Udupa adheres, but the story is mostly seen through the eyes of young Nani, who is sent to Udupa for religious training, but ends up learning a different, and possibly even more valuable, lesson about life in the real world. by Tom Vick, All Movie Guide
