Alternate Best Supporting Actor 1960: Chhabi Biswas in Devi

Chhabi Biswas did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Kalikinkar Roy in Devi.

Devi takes place in the home of a lord who begins to believe that his daughter in love may be the goddess that he worships. 

Previously on the obsessive characters of Chhabi Biswas, Jalsaghar followed him, also a wealthy man obsessed with music to the point of losing sight of everything around him, although a delusion one could argue was as much to do with his trauma as just perhaps his love of an art form. Said process is a little different in this film, in part, because Biswas’s character of Kalinkinkar Roy is a supporting role in the scheme of the film, although the film’s particular tapestry only leaves Sharmila Tagore as the young bride Doyamoyee, as her onscreen husband Umaprased Roy, played by Ray’s frequent collaborator Soumitra Chetterjee has a strong presence however he too comes in and out of the film. We find the elder Roy though from the open as a very specific sort of religious zealot and what Biswas’s performance is, is an articulation of the different forms this realizes itself in, within his relatively sparse, but impactful scenes. One of his earliest scenes is holding a ritual in front of his statue of the goddess where Biswas’s particular portrayal of devotion is beyond just faith or belief. There’s something deeply resolute in his eyes and more importantly a conviction that is clear obsession as he looks upon the statue as his whole life, not just an aspect of it, or just an important part of it that gives him meaning. When Biswas looks up to it we see Roy seeing everything that is of value to his reality in that statue, a fundamental anchor that will define this man going forward. 

We see as the elder Roy has a dream of Doyamoyee as his goddess and Biswas’s performance in the moment is a man captured by the fascination of the idea. Where we then find as he now accepts this as a simple truth to everything, Chhabi’s performance successfully brings this specific sense of a spiritual passion within the man that is never doubting and just pushing him through. Every delivery within his idea of pushing forth Doyamoyee as a reincarnation of his goddess is with the utmost belief and determination. Biswas portrays someone who firmly believes this and in that approach is convincing in creating this unlikely situation from occurring as this powerful man goes about fulfilling essentially his own prophecy. When his younger son is horrified to discover this, the Biswas’s performance as the elder Roy is a man beyond gone within his mania, to the point that he’s essentially singing the words to his son of how meaningful and how true his prophecy would be. Biswas’s performance is marvelous because as much as it is an expression of self-delusion essentially what he creates is a purity within it, where even the “singing” delivery is a man fully embodying every notion of the spirit he believes he’s captured by making Doyamoyee essentially this living altar. An altar going so far as to supposedly provide healing to the Elder Roy’s grandson, of Roy’s older son, until it no longer works and we see the end result. Biswas’s final scene is remarkable as we see the dejected man, because it is with the same intensity as we saw with his blind devotion that Biswas portrays the man’s broken faith in his crafted deity. Biswas doesn’t portray a specific moment of true self-reflection or clarity, rather the despondency he brings so palatably is within the same narrow focus, and intensity that created his prophecy in the first place. Biswas crafts a striking portrait of the progression and regression of a personalized zealotry.