Satyajit Ray and his work have come to mean different things to different people. In the world of cinema, he is the only Indian director whose name is taken in the same breath as stalwarts of filmmaking like Alfred Hitchcock, Jean Renoir, Akira Kurosawa, Andrei Tarkovsky and others of that stature. For others in Indian society, he is the embodiment of a Bengali artistic consciousness after Rabindranath Tagore and will remain so for time immemorial. As for me, personally, he exemplifies the greatest truths of humanity and society, told in celluloid.
So what exactly makes this man a legend for the world and me? The answer is rather simple - Ray was a master craftsman. A graduate of Economics, he was completely self-taught in the art of filmmaking. He gained his immensely sophisticated cinematic technique from his diet of films made by the ‘greats’ before him and still carved his individuality by rooting his art in deeply Indian sensibilities. Ray’s films are engaging, arresting and riveting even decades after they were made because he had an eye for detail like no other Indian filmmaker in the 20th century. He hand-sketched all his scenes on a storyboard, wrote most, if not all, of his screenplays, self-composed music for his films and knew the eye of the camera like it were his own. Moreover, he did this all while delving deep into the depths of the human existence to bring forth truths which he narrated through visual poetry.
For the modern viewer, his black and white world which often holds itself through the power of restraint and silence are in complete contrast to modern media and can seem both trying and demanding. So we decided to put together a carefully curated list of Ray’s films that are particularly relevant to the current world we live in. We promise that these five films are sure to connect (or reconnect) you with the artistic soul of one of the world’s greatest creative minds.
Note: Choosing these films from Ray’s oeuvre was a Herculean task and by no means do they reflect his greatest works. For the most part, they are some of the author’s personal favourites.
I. Pather Panchali, Song Of The Little Road (1955)
Ray’s directorial debut, Pather Panchali continues to be a landmark in world cinema till today.
The first in Ray’s famous Apu Trilogy, the film is based on Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s 1929 coming-of-age Bengali novel of the same name. The film follows the ramblings of a Bengali village (particularly those of siblings Apu and Durga) punctuated by love, laughter and deep loss. Ray explored the many truths of human existence in the film by capturing seemingly pointless moments - the children who follow the sweet-seller down the road, the abandoned old aunt who tells ghost stories and the beauty of rain droplets on ruffled lily leaves. The cast of the film which largely consisted of untrained actors gave, according to renowned film historian Philip Kemp, “performances of astonishing naturalism” - which are best witnessed rather than described.
Though in his later films Ray made leaps and bounds with camera technique, he never did recreate the raw poetry of human life, as seen in Pather Panchali.
You can watch the film on Amazon Prime Video.
II. Devi, The Goddess (1960)
The disintegration of life due to religious fanaticism, as shown in Devi, is as horrifyingly relevant to modern India as it was when the film was first released. Based on a Bengali short-story, the film is set in rural Bengal where Kalikinkar Roy (Chhabi Biswas), a rich zamindar and devoted follower of the goddess Kali lives with his son Umaprasad (Soumitra Chatterjee) and daughter-in-law Dayamoyee (Sharmila Tagore). One evening Roy has a dream that Dayamoyee is an avatar of Kali and must be worshipped, and so she is. To live his religious ecstasy, Roy makes a shrine of Dayamoyee’s body, who herself a helpless teenage girl silently endures as the sick, elderly and dying seek her blessings, day after day. Tagore gives a riveting performance as an innocent girl driven to madness - one she will never be able to recreate in her later years as one of Bollywood’s leading actresses.
The film culminates in a soul-shattering tragedy, which reveals a truth darker than that of blind religious faith - where patriarchy makes a saint of a woman that systematically destroyed her.
III. Two (1964)
Through a fictional short, Two (also known as Parable Of Two) the genius of Ray conveys the glaring class divide in India in a matter of just twelve minutes. This dialogue-less film features two boys in the absence of adults - one is plump and privileged while the other lean and poor. The rich boy, in his sprawling apartment, keeps himself busy with his numerous and evidently expensive toys. When he hears a flute being played by the boy from the shanty underneath his building, it instigates a war of toys - one where each boy shows of their playthings in an attempt to outdo the other. What’s even more interesting in this metaphoric story is that the camera’s eye places the drama at two extreme levels in the frame - symbolic of the higher and lower rung of the class ladder.
According to an online resource, this recently restored film was “part of a trilogy of short films from India that were commissioned by the US Public Television under the banner of Esso World Theater. Ray was asked to make a film in English in a Bengali setting. Not very happy with the prospect, he opted to do away with the spoken word. A great admirer of the silent cinema, Ray pays a tribute to the genre.”
You can watch on the film on Youtube here.
IV. Aranyer Din Ratri, Days And Nights In The Forest (1970)
Based on a Bengali novel of the same name the film reveals the many complexities of the youth and their affinity towards rootlessness. The tale, whose heavy influences are seen in Konkana Sen Sharma’s debut ‘A Death In The Gunj’ (2017), begins with a group of four friends, all educated but from different walks of life that share deep bonds. With a wish to escape the urban life they set out for a few days to a tribal area in the hinterland of Bihar. This seemingly innocuous holiday begins to unravel their guarded recklessness and hidden vulnerabilities in ways the characters nor the viewers ever expected. Though Ray treats the disjointed experiences of the characters (as described in one review of the film) like a “Mozartian symphony - seamlessly interweaving episodes in a lyrical pattern that rises to a crescendo and drops.” Though the film can be watched for the “memory game” alone- a masterpiece scene of psychological probing where each participant has to add a name to a chain of names of famous people, after repeating all the names in correct sequence. The names each player choose in the film reflects his/her own preference and state of mind.
Today the film, with its urban youth shaped by materialism and individualism is one truly for the wandering millennial.
V. Hirok Rajar Deshe, The Land Of The Diamond King (1980)
The sequel to Ray’s commercially successful Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (1969), this film is a brilliant satire on state oppression. Treated with the touch of a children’s tale the film begins with the comic duo Goopy and Bhagha who have reached the Land Of Diamonds to play their music at the King’s court. It is there that they learn a dark secret — that beneath the apparent virtuous aura of the King is a ruthless man. Forced labour on farms and mines, exploitation through taxation and a ‘brainwashing machine’ suppress protest are some of the evil ways of the King.
It is up to Goopy and Bhagha’s magical powers along with a spirited teacher they meet who must end the rule of this tyrannical monarch. Exploring the perils of state-sponsored terrorism, the oppression of creativity and the false labels of the “anti-national”, the film’s political sensibilities conveyed through comedy and drama makes it a gem in Indian cinema today.
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