Though a fairly straight forward narrative that spans approximately a week in the life of a young executive played by debutant Barun Chanda, a close look at the structure reveals a deeper significance: The seven days in the life of its protagonist comprise the most important seven days of his life and embody all the vital elements that define his being: his success story in the last 10 years, his vaulting ambition, his bonding with his sensitive sister-in-law Tutul who comes to visit them from Patna, his efforts to win her approval since he has been a role model for her; a major threat to his career and the discovery that he is capable of the utmost unfair means to snuff out any threat; his slow immersion into corruption and the ultimate realization that success does not have the significance he has been attaching to it. A whole lot of issues are packed in these seven important days in a film whose running time is 112 minutes and which resorts to first person narration at few junctures to telescope events that otherwise would have taken longer to establish.

Seemabadhha is a classic moral tale of what unbridled ambition can do to a sensitive young man. It traces the life of a small town boy from Patna, the son of a school teacher who is brought up in traditional middle-class values and his meteoric rise till he finds himself in a swanky company flat with a dumb and beautiful but functional wife Dolan (played wonderfully by Paromita Choudhuri) and a 7-year old son who studies in St. Pauls in Darjeeling. There is nothing else in life that he seems to want except the post of director but for that he has to compete with a rival from the lamps division. As he claims in the beginning of the film in first person narrative, he has married his life with the fortunes of his company – a modern management mantra for efficient functioning and greater profits. But he is sensitive enough to understand, as he tells his attractive sister-in-law (Sharmila Tagore) in the beginning of the film that just as he hated Geography in school but had to study it nevertheless to score marks, so also in his professional life he has to do whole lot of things that he many not like but which are essential for promotion, otherwise life will become stagnant. But there seems to be no regret in his voice as he speaks these lines and it seems that he almost enjoys this role playing.

Sharmila Tagore once again plays the role of moral touchstone in the film as she does in Aranyer Din Ratri (1969) and Nayak (1966). She is built as a total contrast to her elder sister who basks in the glory of her husband’s achievement and is skeptical of her younger sister’s boyfriend back in Patna who may not have any future. In one particular evocative scene when Dolan proudly shows her around her spacious high-rise apartment, Dolan opens the windows and points out at the city below and expresses her deep satisfaction that they are so far from the dust and the grime of the city at this level and she cannot make out the difference between bombs and gunshots from this height, an indication of the turbulent Naxalite movement of that period. Shyamal opens out to Tutul only, while his wife is kept in the dark about the problems at his office because she is too insensitive to understand all that.

We are taken on a roller coaster ride through the city of Calcutta of the 1970s as Shyamal drives the two sisters to a British club, a beauty parlour, the race course and a cabaret. Though impressed by whatever she sees she is not effected by it at all except for a brief moment when she clutches the sleeve of Shyamal at the race course in excitement and wants to play once again. It is a poignant and witty moment in the film and for a brief second it exposes the vulnerability of a poised and sensitive woman and reflects the master’s deft touch. In another wonderful scene a proud Shyamal points out to a neon light hoarding featuring his company’s fan and Tutul exclaims at the slow speed of the rotating fan and wonders aloud if his company’s fan moves like that. Shyamal’s ego is pricked and he remains silent; he understands that all his efforts to impress her is lost on her because she is too refined and unaffected.

Ray had often been accused by his contemporaries and critics for not depicting in his films the social and political turmoil that gripped the city and its suburbs in the 60s and the 70s. It is not that he was insensitive to the burning issues of the time, but his references have always been oblique but pointed. In this film, by dealing with an achiever and positing him in direct contrast to the educated unemployed who numbered nearly 10 lakhs (as Shyamal’s first person narrative points out in the beginning of the film), he depicts a reality that is sordid, manipulative and depressing. Shyamal’s well-designed visit to the hospital to have a look at the watchman Tewari who has been hurt by a bomb at the factory is a scathing look at the manipulative ways of people who can call shots from above and decide on the fates of gullible people. The hospital scene stands out in sharp focus when one recalls a preceding scene in the film when one of Shyamal’s senior Tamil colleagues quotes from Joseph Conrad that ambition is not wrong as long as it does not play with the miseries of people. But Shyamal is unperturbed.

The last but one scene where a jubilant Shyamal climbs up the flight of stairs of his apartment which is situated on the 8th floor because the lift is out of order and he becomes progressively tired, could look too literal, but it drives home the point with a force: The toll it takes on an ambitious soul who has played with the miseries of gullible people to achieve his end. This is followed by another literal scene immediately after where Tutul returns the watch to him which he had gifted to her earlier but we don’t really mind. It is the most understated climax; the camera cranes up to the whirling fan at the ceiling while Shyamal and Tutul sit across each other below in silence: Shyamal’s hard earned success has no meaning for her, he realizes, but does the tragedy strike him with the impact that it should? Or is it just another class in Geography?

Seemabadhha forms the second part of Ray's city trilogy. The other two films being Pratidwandi (1970) and Jana Aranya (1975).