room and eventually goes away to Calcutta again. Over time Doyamoyee, only seventeen is stifled by the loneliness that is forced upon her. Khoka also avoids her even though he used to spend most of his time with her before. She is compelled to a life of isolation and myth, far away from a life of reality. This saddens her deeply, but she is unable to escape as she is bound to superstitions and a patriarchal society. Meanwhile, Khoka has developed a severe fever. The family refuses to go to a doctor, believing that Doyamoyee's charanamrito will heal Khoka. So, they keep the child near Doyamoyee that night. But being a logical person, Khoka's mother asks Doyamoyee to give up and tell their father-in-law to visit the doctor. But as a young girl of seventeen, Doyamoyee is unable to voice it out and instead decides to keep Khokha with her that night because she misses his company while hoping he recovers miraculously. The next morning, when Umaprasad returns home to take action against his father's beliefs and to free Doyamoyee from this situation, he finds his father crying at the feet of goddess Kali's idol. The reason is at that morning, Khoka died due to lack of proper treatment; the Charanamrito didn't work and the belief cost the child's life. Umaprasad rushes to Doyamoyee's room and finds her in an abnormal condition, as she mumbles that she should go to the water (visarjan), otherwise the family would kill her. Umaprasad is unable to make her see sense, as Khoka's death and her own experiences of being called a goddess become too much for her to bear, breaking her psychologically. Cast Sharmila Tagore - Dayamoyee Chhabi Biswas - Kalikinkar Choudhuri Soumitra Chatterjee - Umaprasad Purnendu Mukherjee - Taraprasad Karuna Banerjee - Harasundari Arpan Chowdhury - Khoka, child Anil Chatterjee - Bhudeb Kali Sarkar - Professor Sarkar Mohammed Israil - Nibaran Khagesh Chakravarti - Kaviraj Nagendranath Kabyabyakarantirtha - Priest Santa Devi - Sarala Preservation The Academy Film Archive preserved Devi in 1996. Critical reception and legacy The film received critical acclaim upon its release. On Rotten Tomatoes, Devi holds a score of 100% based on 10 reviews for an average rating of 7.6/10. Directors William Wyler and Elia Kazan have described the film as "poetry on celluloid". The director Francis Ford Coppola considers Devi to be Ray's best work and called it