The name of Satyajit Ray is one of the
most well known in the context of Indian cinema. He is hailed as the visionary
who ushered modernity into Indian cinema. Ray directed thirty seven films
including feature films, documentaries and short films. He also wrote several
works of fiction in his own unique style of writing. Besides this, he is also
known as a publisher, a graphic designer, a film critic and an illustrator.
There was also an exhibition of photographs taken by him in 2011 at the Kolkata
film festival.
Some well known films of Ray are the Apu Trilogy, Charulata, Aranyer DinRatri,
Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, Hirak Rajar Deshe, the Feluda Series and others. Films like the Apu Trilogy have a pervading sense of realism in them. In fact
Satyajit Ray was greatly influenced by the ideas of realism, especially Italian
Neorealist cinema. This was a movement in Italy where films mainly about the
working classes were made. They were filmed on location and often used
non-professional workers. It showed life in post-war Italy, focusing on the
everyday life of the people, their psyche and the oppression and poverty that
they faced.
The movies of Ray reflect this and as a
realist, his work on his documentaries is interesting to review. His
biographical documentaries, about the lives of several artists of his time that
he himself greatly admired, show a certain influence of the neorealist cinema
as well as his perception of modernity. These films are Bala, based upon the famous bharatnatyam dancer, Balaswarswathi, The Inner Eye, based on the blind
painter, Binodbehari Mukherjee, Rabindranath Tagore, and Sukumar Ray.
A biography is an account of someone’s
life which is detailed and deals with not just the bare details like place and
time of birth education work and death, but also highlights various aspects of
his or her life, including intimate details of experience. It may also include
an analysis of the subject’s personality. There have been several biographical
feature films made with an actor playing the role of the protagonist whose life
is being portrayed, such as Johny Depp as Edward D. Wood, Jr. In
Ed
Wood (1994),
Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon (1999), and Jaime Foxx as Ray Charles in Ray(2004).Documentary biographies,
unlike feature films, mostly use newsreel and photographs. Sometimes, if the
person on whom the film is being made or people who know him or her personally
or professionally are alive, then they are interviewed. Documentary biographies
have been made about prominent public figures like Eleanor Roosevelt, The Duke
of Windsor and Martin Luther King Jr.
The films of Ray, too, use mostly
newsreel and old footage in some and interviews or live performances in others.
Bala, a documentary film based on the
classical bharatnatyam dancer, is probably the only documentary which has
almost no information on the personal life of the dancer. From the beginning to
the end it focuses on her professional life and achievements. It is also the
only of the four documentaries where Ray has used the interview style several
times. The music in the documentary has been composed by her two brothers T. Viswanathan and T. Ranganathan. There
is a smooth blending of still photographs and newspaper clippings with video
which gives the documentary its continuity. However, it seems lacking in
detail, especially regarding her childhood and early years of dance. This is
because there was a lack of cooperation from Balaswaraswathi herself who was
shy in speaking English and reticent about her early life “when dancing was
considered by polite society to bevirtually synonymous to prostitution.”[1]
Also, Ray had not seriously studied Bharatnatyam until he came to make Bala. All this leads to the value of the
film being mainly “archival” and does not reach his usual standard of
film-making.
Rabindranath Tagore is, according to Mary Seton, “not a film which on first
viewing reveals what has gone into its creating”[2].
On the day the full-length film was premiered in Delhi (may 5th 1961),
Ray remarked: “I put as much work on it as on three feature films. My approach
to biography was to stress Tagore as a human being and patriot.” [3]Frequently,
Ray’s scripts had taken him around ten days to finish. The one hour tribute to
Rabindranath had no formal scenario but it took him a month to prepare a visual
continuity. The biggest challenge was his adamant decision not to use any
interviews in the film which was an extraordinary and bold decision as it would
have been easy to rely on them. He also did not include any recitations of
Tagore’s poems despite the fact that he is primarily a poet. This is because he
felt that the brilliance of Tagore’s poetry is lost in translation. However he
did include some passages of singing which are quite moving. Although the film
is far from being propaganda such as those by the Indian Government’s Films
Division, it does gloss over any controversy surrounding the poet. It contains
no mention of his sister-in-law, Kadambari Devi’s suicide, his fraught relationship
with the Bengali public, his ill-advised praise of Mussolini’s Italy or his
criticism of Gandhi although it is briefly mentioned that the two did not see
eye to eye. However, despite all this, parts of the film truly achieve the mark
of a great work, especially a sequence which shows Rabi’s childhood. Ray
himself considers this to be amongst the best work done by him.
Sukumar Ray is
a biographical documentary made by Satyajit Ray about his own father. It was
made on the centenary of his birth. This too was a rather difficult film for
Satyajit to make as he had to depend largely on photographs of his father, his
writings, illustrations and dramatisation of his works. “Ray rejected the idea
of anyone playing the role of Sukumar on grounds that he himself wouldn’t be
convinced by it.”[4] This fact combined with
the untrancelatable quality of humour is probably why the film remains to some
extent inaccessible to non-bengali audience. Ray did not attempt an English
version of the film, opting to only use subtitles. Despite the difficulties
posed while making this film, it never seems slow thanks to Ray’s clever use of
drawings. The music based on Tagore, may seem a little mournful at times which
is perhaps Satyjit’s way of mourning the loss of his father. The showing of the
dramatisation of his plays as well as “Haw Jaw Baw Raw Law” (“gibberish”) also
keeps the interest alive. The scene from the latter reminds us of the mad
hatter’s tea party in Alice in wonderland where time stands still. Using the
silhouette of three unique characters and purple backlighting, the scene shows
the intrinsic sense of the ridiculous which was present in Sukumar’s works.
The Inner Eye, a
documentary film based on Binod Behari Mukherji is considered by many film
critics as a creative masterpiece. Andrew Robinson calls it “...quite simply
the finest short documentary about a creative artist I have seen...” [5]Ray
was inspired by Binode Bihari while at Shantiniketan. He calls him the “finest
Indian painter” and is impressed by his precise technique and the lack of
flamboyance in his art. Ray mixes the past and present and “manages to distil
Binode Behari’s essence, to make comprehensible the extraordinary fact of his
continuing to create art without sight.” The music in the entire documentary is
congruous and stirring. It comes to the fore with the sitar composition by
Nikhil Banerjee at the end of the film. As the music flows on, the image
freezes on a profile of Binode Behari’s face with a quote from the man himself.
After viewing these documentaries, one
cannot help but notice the many similarities in approach. The most basic
similarity is that all these films are informed by a deep admiration of the
subject. Also, though the narration is spoken by Ray himself, except in Sukumar
Ray, where the famous actor Soumitro Chottopadhay narrates, he hardly ever
intrudes into the film as an individual. There is an omniscient narrative voice
in all the films. Music is given special importance and brings out the mood of
the film. If a certain shot which is important in depicting the character is
not present, ray is not opposed to using reconstructions and actors. He finds
Cinema Verite to have a “slightly false element to it” [6]and
therefore does not use this technique in any of his documentaries. The impetus
to make these films is also the same: the appeal to him of a particular
personality, rather than cinematic considerations. He ushers in modernity by
using several western scientific techniques such as voice of god technique in
these films. Also, in a way, through his documentaries, we get a picture of the
modern man faced with seemingly insurmountable difficulty, whether it is Binod
Behari’s loss of eyesight or Sukumar Ray’s impending death. However, unlike
most of the western modernist writers or film-makers, his films lack any sense
of Nihilism. Instead, he shows personalities who surpassed these odds which
seemed impossible to others and still managed to create art and literature.
Just as they inspired the film-maker, they act as an inspiration to the
audience. The similarities between these films show us the basic principles of
Ray in regard to documentary and his approach to the genre of Biographical
Documentary.
Bibliography
Andrew Robinson. Satyajit Ray The Inner Eye. Rupa & co.
1990
Marie Seton. Portrait of a
Director: Satyajit Ray. New Delhi:
Vikas Publications. 1971.
Suranjan Ganguly. Satyajit Ray In
Search of the Modern. Indialog Publications. Pvt. Ltd. 2001.
[1]
Andrew Robinson. Satyajit Ray The Inner Eye. Rupa & co. 1990. P 280
[2]
Andrew Robinson. Satyajit Ray The Inner Eye. Rupa & co. 1990. P 277
[3] Marie Seton. Portrait of a Director: Satyajit
Ray. New Delhi: Vikas Publications.
1971.
[4]
Andrew Robinson. Satyajit Ray The Inner Eye. Rupa & co. 1990. P 280
[5]
Andrew Robinson. Satyajit Ray The Inner Eye. Rupa & co. 1990. P 282
[6]
Andrew Robinson. Satyajit Ray The Inner Eye. Rupa & co. 1990. P 274
