Satyajit Ray Season Reveals the Enduring Versatility and Masterly Satyajit Ray: Part Two Style of the Indian Director
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22 The second part of our major Satyajit Ray season reveals the enduring versatility and masterly Satyajit Ray: Part Two style of the Indian director. But his later output is marked by a darkening mood that reflects Ray’s This second part of Ray’s career begins And his exquisite historical drama about on a sunny note. The Adventures of the British military takeover of Lucknow ambivalence towards the society he lived in, Goopy and Bagha was his most popular in 1856, The Chess Players, was equally argues Andrew Robinson. film in Bengal, with children and adults concerned with individual morality singing its Bengali songs on the streets as with political systems. But his two for months. ‘Maharaja, We Salute You’ detective films, The Golden Fortress was spontaneously sung by the crowds and The Elephant God, based on his at Ray’s funeral in 1992. own Holmes-and-Watson-style Bengali But then his mood darkened, first into the duo, betrayed a declining belief in official wincing irony of Days and Nights in the justice. In Deliverance, a stark attack on Forest, afterwards into a political trilogy: the cruelty of Untouchability, Ray moved The Adversary, Company Limited about as far from the hopefulness of and The Middleman. From 1969, the Pather Panchali as it was possible to go. Naxalite movement inspired by Maoism Ray’s last three films, though not without rocked Bengal through terrorist acts his trademark comedy, were urgent by young Bengalis, followed by horrific warnings to his fellow citizens against police and army reprisals, and a period religious fundamentalism and social of national Emergency declared by Indira corruption. Unfortunately, they were Gandhi in 1975, in which she became prescient, given the notorious destruction in effect a dictator. While Ray felt some of the mosque at Ayodhya in 1992 by a sympathy for revolution, as shown in the Hindu mob and numerous later bribery relatively optimistic first film, he never scandals. But they were also works of supported violence, and was increasingly art that speak to everyone. As the great disgusted by the immorality of politicians, photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, businessmen and ordinary individuals, a long-time Ray aficionado, truly skewered in the later two films. remarked of Branches of the Tree: ‘It is of His emotion-laden portrait of the man-made distressing beauty’. Bengal Famine of 1943, Distant Thunder, See p7 for Sharmila Tagore in person managed to retain faith in individual See p20 for Ray course and poster display compassion, despite the historical death of millions from hunger and disease. The Home and the World WHAT’S ON 23 Film Season | Satyajit Ray In partnership with Restoration and Print Credits The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Prints courtesy of the Satyajit Ray Film and Study Center Collection at the Academy Film Archive Ray The Inner Eye Bala The Golden Fortress The Academy Film Archive’s Satyajit The Kingdom of Diamonds Ray Preservation Project is an ongoing Deliverance effort to preserve and restore Ray’s work. Pikoo It began after he received an honorary The Home and the World Academy Award (1992): producers of An Enemy of the People Branches of the Tree the Oscar telecast were dismayed by Ray The Adventures of Goopy the poor condition of the few US copies The Stranger India 1999. Dir Goutam Ghosh. 105min and Bagha of his films. As he had worked on nonflammable ‘safety’ film, which can Goutam Ghosh’s documentary begins Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne Restored by the Satyajit Ray Preservation deteriorate in warm, moist environments with Audrey Hepburn at the affecting India 1968. With Tapen Chatterjee, Rabi Project at the Academy Film Archive. Oscar ceremony in 1992 where Ray Ghosh, Santosh Dutta. 118min. EST. U (like India’s) many of Ray’s works were Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive in jeopardy. The Academy collaborated was unavoidably absent, and closes Based on a story by his grandfather, with the Satyajit Ray Society, producers Company Limited with his childhood encounter with The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha who worked with Ray, the National The Middleman Rabindranath Tagore who wrote released Ray’s pent-up love of fantasy, Archive of India, the Film Foundation, The Chess Players a vital poem in his autograph book. given free rein in his grandfather’s the Merchant Ivory Foundation and The Elephant God The rest is largely chronological, with writing and song-composing. The film the Satyajit Ray Film and Study Center The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha celebrated highlights from the films is iconic in Bengal – and admired by at the University of California, Sikkim linked to recorded comments by Ray. Salman Rushdie – but its spell has Two Santa Cruz. To date, the Academy has The frequent and intelligent attention not been so strong in the West. The preserved 18 features and one short. to Ray’s drawings and shooting six-and-a-half-minute ‘Dance of the notebooks, plus musical extracts, Ghosts’ is a tour-de-force. Plus, Two captures his exceptional versatility. (1964. 15min), an enchanting, wordless short about a rich boy’s rivalry with a poor boy. Sun 1 Sept 20:40 NFT2 Sun 1 Sept 18:00 NFT2 Wed 4 Sept 20:40 NFT2 Sat 7 Sept 15:40 NFT2 Follow us 24 WHAT’S ON INTRO Bala Film Season | Satyajit Ray Days and Nights in the Forest The Adversary Sikkim + The Inner Eye Aranyer Din Ratri Pratidwandi India 1971. 55min India 1972. 20min. Some EST India 1970. With Soumitra Chatterjee, India 1970. With Dhritiman Chatterjee, Documentary attracted Ray most The Inner Eye is small masterpiece Rabi Ghosh, Sharmila Tagore. 115min. Indira Devi, Debraj Roy. 110min. EST. PG when it focused on an individual. about the career of a painter, EST. PG Ray’s most openly political film, based Sikkim, however, is a portrait of a Binode Bihari Mukherjee, perhaps As in Kanchenjungha, a group of on a novel by Sunil Ganguli, was an small Himalayan state, politically the finest modern Indian artist, Calcutta Bengalis – four young male up-to-the minute response to the independent in 1971 but absorbed despite the fact that he went blind. friends – are taken out of their normal mayhem of the Naxalite movement in into India in 1975. Ray was He was also Ray’s teacher, so his urban environment. They go on a Bengal. Its protagonist, played with commissioned by its ruler, which film is both personal and profound, jaunt by car to a tribal area, in search compelling assurance by Dhritiman limited his freedom; later, the film ending with Mukherjee’s statement: of some alcoholic, sexual and other Chatterjee, is a young college graduate was suppressed by an over-sensitive ‘Blindness is a new feeling, a new adventures, while staying in a remote with a conscience desperately Indian government. Sikkim contains experience, a new state of being.’ forest bungalow. In the course of searching for a job in ‘a nightmare lovely, poetic scenes. a few days, each man experiences city’, as Ray described Calcutta in + Bala an epiphany at the hands of various 1970. His younger brother, chillingly India 1976. 31min women in a scintillating comedy convincing, chooses to follow the Bala shows off Balasaraswati, a great of manners. path of violence. exponent of Bharata Natyam dance, * Introduced by Sharmila Tagore which originated in south India, with skill and reverence. Mon 2 Sept 20:45 NFT1 Thu 5 Sept 20:45 NFT1 Fri 6 Sept 20:40 NFT2 Mon 16 Sept 18:00 NFT1* Sun 8 Sept 20:45 NFT1 Sat 7 Sept 18:40 NFT3 book online at bfi.org.uk WHAT’S ON 25 Film Season | Satyajit Ray INTRO Distant Thunder Company Limited The Golden Fortress The Middleman Ashani Sanket Seemabaddha Sonar Kella Jana Aranya India 1973. With Soumitra Chatterjee, India 1971. With Barun Chanda, India 1974. With Soumitra Chatterjee, India 1975. With Pradip Mukherjee, Babita, Ramesh Mukherjee. 101min. Sharmila Tagore, Parumita Chowdhury. Santosh Dutta, Siddhartha Chatterjee. Satya Banerjee, Utpal Dutt. 131min. EST EST. PG 112min. EST. U 115min. EST In the last of Ray’s political trilogy, The famine of 1943 impinged on Ray Following the official clamp-down In the first film about his detective a sinister tragi-comedy that somehow through corpses in Calcutta’s streets. on the Naxalite movement, Calcutta Feluda, Ray avoided the whodunit escaped Emergency censorship, Afterwards he felt guilt that he had entered a period of relative calm, structure of his novel, Sonar Kella. corruption has infected Calcutta’s done nothing to help the victims. in which many kinds of corruption Instead, the audience come to know marrow. Again, a young man struggles Distant Thunder, from a novel by flourished. Company Limited depicts the villains early on, while the to find work in business, but now he Bibhutibhusan Banerjee, was his the well-heeled, anglicised business detective is kept guessing – as in a gradually persuades himself to do response. But it contains only one community in Calcutta known as Hitchcock film. The plot involves the virtually anything necessary for corpse, and instead focuses on a the boxwallahs, familiar to Ray from kidnapping of a boy, who claims to success, encouraged by a Dickensian starving rural Brahmin couple whose his job in advertising. An ambitious have known in a previous life an cast of shady characters, such as a ancient caste restrictions are finally executive willing to sacrifice his ancient ‘golden fortress’ in Rajasthan; dapper PRO played by the fascinating overturned by compassion. Gorgeous integrity for promotion finds his the villains hope he will lead them Rabi Ghosh. ‘The story demanded colours underline the coexistence of conscience pricked by an attractive to buried treasure.