Humanism and Hope: The Legacy of Film Director Satyajit Ray
A wall hanging at my residence of a makeup sketch by Satyajit Ray of Mirza and Mir from his film Shatranj ki Khiladi
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UDAYAN PANDIT: You first tell
me if you are on my side or not...
BAGHA BYNE: We are on the side
of good.
GOOPY GYNE: Yes, on the side of
good.
This swift exchange between the
schoolteacher-turned-rebel Udayan Pandit and the protagonists Goopy and Bagha
in the film Hirak Rajar Deshe (Kingdom of Diamonds, 1980) sums up the universal
humanism that permeated Satyajit Ray’s films. Simple yet profound.
This “children’s film for
everyone” is a landmark work of art dealing with resistance against tyranny,
with a people’s uprising against totalitarianism. Forty years later, Hirak
Rajar Deshe—the tale of a teacher and his unlikely allies, Goopy the singer and
Bagha the drummer, toppling a tyrant—rings truer than ever, as leaders around
the world display streaks of the anti-democratic Hirak Raja, out to suppress
any form of dissent or critique.
Hirak Rajar Deshe ends on a
note of idealistic hope and popular rejoicing as the despot is subjected to his
own magajdholai (brainwashing) machine, his giant statue is pulled down by the
people, and freedom and justice are restored to the land.
The endings of Ray’s films
often symbolize the humanism and hope that he came to typify as a unique
creative force between 1955 and 1992.
Take Ganashatru, his 1989 film
based on Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, but transcreated in a Bengali
small-town setting. Ibsen’s play ends on a brutal individualistic note— “the
strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone”. Ray’s film, however,
ends with the upright, idealistic doctor hounded by his community for standing
up for science and truth, asking “There is hope?”, and on cue the sounds of a
rally in his support organized by a young and educated group of locals can be
heard. Overwhelmed, the doctor exults, “I am not alone!”
Individual struggle for the
collective good was often a Ray leitmotif. As he once put it, “I too am an
activist—as an artist. That’s my way.” 1
That way of art as activism, of
art as an agent of change, was recognized and celebrated by the United Nations
some 23 years after Ray’s passing, with the exhibition “The Transformative
Power of Art”. His portrait was unveiled in New York in 2015 along with those
of 15 other creators, including the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Joan Baez and
Malala Yousafzai, to “bring out humanity’s transformative power… as … art can
indeed transform lives”.
That Ray found pride of place
in this pantheon was no surprise because his films did indeed mirror the United
Nations core values of universal human rights, justice and dignity for all
people, and equity. And they did so by telling human stories and by focusing on
relationships and emotions.
Sharmila Tagore, the heroine of
Apur Sansar (The World of Apu, 1959), put it succinctly: “For Tagore and Ray,
the people and their predicament came first.” 2 She was, of course, referring
to the most towering cultural icon of Bengal, Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel
Laureate polymath who had a deep influence on Ray.
With Satyajit Ray's son, film director Sandip Ray (center), and renowned
actress Sharmila Tagore (left) at the Satyajit Ray Memorial Lecture, Kolkata,
India, in 2013.
“I have been moved by Tagore's work ... Of
course, our cultural background, our cultural makeup, is a fusion of East and
West.... We have imbibed Western education, Western music, Western art, Western
literature,” Ray said. 3
Ray’s creative sensibility was
a combination of nature and nurture. His grandfather, Upendrakishore Ray, was a
famous Bengali writer, illustrator, philosopher and prominent figure of the
Brahmo Samaj (an offshoot of Hinduism that shunned idol worship and emphasized
the equality of man). His father, Sukumar Ray, was a pioneering Bengali writer
of nonsense rhyme and children’s literature as well as an illustrator and a
critic. His inspirations ranged from Rabindranath Tagore to his teachers
Nandalal Bose and Benode Behari Mukherjee in Santiniketan, from the films of
Renoir and De Sica (Bicycle Thieves), Chaplin and Ford (Fort Apache) to the
photography of Cartier Bresson and the music of Beethoven.
So, when his biographer, Andrew
Robinson, was to ask him if he considered himself “50 per cent Western”, Ray
had replied: “Yes, I think so—which makes me more accessible to a Western
audience than someone who’s not to the same extent influenced by Western
models.” 4
And yet, Ray remained loyal to
his roots and the dishevelled study in his south Calcutta (now Kolkata) home
was forever his creative headquarters, from where he explored and depicted
universal human values through his films. He was a truly “glocal”
citizen—steadfastly local in his medium of work but effortlessly global in its
appeal.
Take one of my favourite
sequences in a Ray film, the charming memory game in Aranyer Din Ratri (Days
and Nights in the Forest, 1970), where the central characters rattle off names
of famous personalities. The glocal range of characters thrown up by the game
never ceases to amaze me, as I put my Ray memory to the test—“Rabindranath,
Karl Marx, Cleopatra, Atulya Ghosh, Helen of Troy, Shakespeare, Mao Tse Tung,
Don Bradman, Rani Rashmoni, Bobby Kennedy, Tekchand Thakur, Napoleon, Mumtaz
Mahal”!
It was significant that the
memory game focused only on people. As Ray was to say: “I am not conscious of
being a humanist. It’s simply that I am interested in human beings.” And the
manner in which he depicted human beings, their frailties and their struggles,
their individual rebellions and simple triumphs, drew admirers far and wide.
It is no wonder that when Ray
approached Richard Attenborough hesitantly for a small role in Shatranj Ke
Khiladi (The Chess Players, 1977), the British thespian said: “Satyajit, I
would be happy to recite even the telephone directory for you.” 5 After having
worked with Ray, Attenborough was to liken his genius to that of Chaplin.
So fundamental to life and
humanity were Ray’s creations that the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa once
wrote: “Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without
seeing the sun or the moon.” 6
Even before he had embarked on
his first film, Pather Panchali (1955), Ray had written a piece titled “What Is
Wrong with Indian Films?” in The Statesman newspaper in Calcutta in 1948—“The
raw material of the cinema is life itself. It is incredible that a country
which has inspired so much painting and music and poetry should fail to move
the filmmaker. He has only to keep his eyes open, and his ears. Let him do so.”
Ray did just that over the next 40 years and 37 films. From human dignity amid tragedy in The Apu Trilogy to the resilience of the human spirit in Mahanagar; the strong anti-war message through a children’s fable in Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne to the triumph of punishment over crime in his popular detective films Sonar Kella and Joi Baba Felunath.
Ray’s final film, Agantuk (The
Stranger, 1992), was a culmination of the master storyteller’s philosophy and
belief systems. When casting Utpal Dutt for the central role of The Stranger,
Ray told the veteran actor that he had put his own views into this character
and so he must speak on the filmmaker’s behalf. From civilization to religion,
Tagore to tribal peoples, science to morality, social duties to human
values—Ray the humanist explored them all in a most personal manner.
Legend has it that on the final
day of shooting his last film, Ray threw his hands up in the air and said,
“That’s it. That’s all there is. I don’t have anything more to say.” Not long
after, he passed away in his beloved Calcutta.
Less than a month before his
passing, Ray received an Honorary Oscar. The Academy Award citation read: “To
Satyajit Ray, in recognition of his rare mastery of the art of motion pictures,
and of his profound humanitarian outlook, which has had an indelible influence
on filmmakers and audiences throughout the world.”
Notes
1 Derek Malcolm, "Satyajit
Ray: Interview", in Satyajit Ray: Interviews, Burt Cardullo, ed. (Jackson,
Mississippi, University Press of Mississippi, 2007).
2 Shamila Tagore, "What
Satyajit Ray Left Us is an Inheritance of Endless Possibilities", The
Wire, 11 September 2015. Available at
https://thewire.in/film/what-satyajit-ray-left-us-is-an-inheritance-of-endless-possibilities
3 Udayan Gupta, "The
Politics of Humanism: An Interview with Satyajit Ray", in Satyajit Ray:
Interviews, Burt Cardullo, ed. (Jackson, Mississippi, University Press of
Mississippi, 2007).
4 Andrew Robinson, Satyajit
Ray: The Inner Eye: The Biography of a Master Film-Maker (New York: I.B.
Tauris, 2004).
5 Suresh Jindal, My Adventures
with Satyajit Ray: The Making of Shatranj Ke Khilari (Noida, India,
HarperCollins, 2017).
6 Andrew Robinson, Sudden
Genius? The Gradual Path to Creative Breakthroughs (New York, Oxford University
Press, 2010).
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The contents of this article were published in
the UN Chronicle and the Hindi newspaper Jagran on the birth centenary of Satyajit Ray on 2nd May 2021
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