REMEMBERING SATYAJIT RAY.

By Milana Prakash (Team Creative)

Iconic Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa once said, “Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon.”

Satyajit Ray is undoubtedly a well-known name within any Bengali household. Exposure to his films and his writings are an almost inevitable and inextricable part of growing up as a Bengali. However, as a man of multiple talents, Ray is not just confined to the borders of Bengal and is today recognised throughout the world as one of the finest storytellers ever born. His outstanding contribution to cinema earned him an Academy Honorary Award in 1902. But his bequest sprawls more than just an impressive list of awards; and the fact that his cinema is considered as the Bible for film making even today is a true indicator of the kind of unparalleled filmmaker that he was.

(The Iconic train scene from Pather Panchali – Part 1 of the Apu Trilogy)

His films placed Indian cinema on a new pedestal and inspired, and continue to inspire filmmakers even today. Contemporary Indian filmmakers like Sujoy Ghosh,Shoojit Sarkar and Mira Nair have on multiple occasions admitted of being inspired by Ray’s cinema. Shoojit Sarkar (The director of Piku and Vicky Donor) in fact had once openly confessed that he blindly ‘copied’ Ray’s films. While Sujoy Ghosh’s (Director of Jhankaar Beats and Kahaani) films too have unmistakable and conspicuous influence of Ray’s body of cinema. Remember the scene from Kahaani, where Vidya stands by the window looking at the idol of Durga being carried around? It was inspired by a frame off Charulata; or the ‘Running Hot Water’ reference that was taken from one of the Feluda stories.

Mira Nair too in an interview said that while making ‘The Namesake’ she often went back to one of Ray’s finest works, ‘The Apu Triology’ to capture the honest essence of human emotions.

Barring Indian filmmakers, noted international filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola and Danny Boyle too claim to be fans of his awe-inspiring gamut of cinema.

(Tagore and Ray as a young boy)

       

While Ray left behind a legacy that’s almost eternal, it was the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore who inspired him. In fact when Ray as a child visited Tagore at his residence, felt Tagore was ‘remote, almost God like’ to him. One of his most timeless films, ‘Charulata’ was an adaptation of Tagore’s novella Nastanirh. He also went on to make a documentary on Tagore, commissioned by the government of India as a mark of tribute to his idol.

While an ordinary viewer, could insouciantly brandish Ray’s cinema as ‘slow’ or even worse ‘boring’, it is neither slow nor boring; instead is undulating and enchanting. What stands out distinctly about his films is the placid and languid tone that conveys the ordinariness of human emotions so seamlessly. His films teem with universal emotions that bring out the extra-ordinariness in the lives of his seemingly ordinary characters. For any cinema lover, to have not seen Ray’s body of work is a near deplorable sin. In fact such is his contribution to cinema, that it wouldn’t be wrong to divide Indian films into a Pre-Ray and Post-Ray era. His films etched a milestone in the timeline of the evolution of cinema and spoke a universal language that resonated with a global audience.