He was an acquired taste, still is. Because it’s a given, every mid-generation filmmaker of India salutes his memory, but those who have actually seen his films can be counted on your 10 fingers.
“No, I haven’t seen Pather Panchali,” bragged a scion a from a filmmaking family over a decade ago, “and I never will. It’s in black-and-white.. and it must be too depressing-vepressing. No baba no, you keep your Rays-Fays.”
That quote is perfectly accurate. And I still marvel at the fact that the prolific filmmaker snatches scenes and ideas for his blockbusters from the most esoteric European and American films, but refuses to stock a single Ray DVD in his extensive collection.
Perhaps, he can’t do much with the Ray DVDs. After all, Pather Panchali and the 27 other films Ray directed, are inimitable – imbued with an originality of vision, technical mastery and universal relevance.
What am I getting at? Am I implying that the Mumbai’s glitzwallas should know about the Ray masterpieces? Or am I reminding you that Ray during as well as after his lifetime was not appreciated by the mainstream moghuls? No, because that would amount to stating the obvious.
Must watch
Must watch
Those critics/reviewers/whatever who have not watched the Aputrilogy, Jalsaghar, Mahanagar, Charulata and Aranyer Din Rhatri are unqualified for their jobs. They don’t know what cinematic excellence is.. and that’s why perhaps the most asinine Dhawanian comedies and the misconceived Jodha Akbar get away with multi-star ratings.
Apart from Shatranj ke Khilari, Ray did not attempt a Hindi film; he had the honesty to say that he could not get into a language he neither understood nor speak. Unlike Ram Gopal Varma and Mani Ratnam, the master remained rooted in his soil, unmindful of narrower recognition and an infinitely lower bank balance.
Here, there, everywhere
Globally, of course, he became India’s ambassador to world cinema. Francois Truffaut is believed to have walked out of the Cannes screening of
Pather
Panchali
because “it was about poverty and peasants.” Turned out that this story was fabricated.
When Truffaut was in Mumbai in the 1970s, he clarified, “On the contrary, I wanted to see
Pather Panchali
once again, immediately after it ended.”
Be that as it may, Satyajit Ray loomed larger-than-cinema; his was a Renaissance sensibility that fused Bengal and western idioms of literature, art, music composing and filmmaking. Influenced most of all it would seem by the French filmmaker Jean Renoir, whom he assisted on the making of The River, Ray was the quintessential Kolkata bhadra lok-turned-refined-artist. From Kolkata, Bimal Roy moved to Mumbai and reached a wider national audience, but in the international eye, the focus remained on Ray.
Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen had their immeasurable value but comparisons with Ray often led to odious controversies.
Not for all
Not much has changed, except Chitra doesn’t screen Ray anymore. Instead, a handful of Ray dvds are accessible at some selected stores. Mumbai’s Crossword store would stock them but not anymore.
In Kolkata, though, the DVDs are easily reachable. Oddly enough, television has not lionised the director at all or sought to discover an untapped audience. Undoubtedly, his children’s films like Goopy Gayen Bagha Bayen, if adequately publicised, could jack up TRP ratings.
His followers
Aah, do you ever wonder if Ray left a legacy at all for the filmmaking community? Ray did stress the importance of real life locations, a natural style of acting and wry colloquial dialogue.
Vestiges of Ray can be traced in the cinema of Shyam Benegal, Aparna Sen, Rituparno Ghosh, Goutam Ghose and perhaps even Sanjay Leela Bhansali (the Charulata atmosphere in Devdas).
The others, even 16 years after his passing away, remember him as that man from Bengal whom the world adored.. but they couldn’t. Or wouldn’t understand.