Guest Review: Deep Focus, Reflections on Cinema

Reviewed by: Purvi Shah

If you are looking for a walk down the lane of black and white movies, or some anecdotes on the making of films, there are few things that you will come across in this volume of collected essays by Ray. Its not a story of how films were made or a documentary on cinema of age. If you feel you can flip through the pages and find some exotic pictures of identifiable old movie stars, wrong again, unless of course you are a 50 plus Bengali. 

What it reflects at is much more than all of that as the title goes: it is indeed a DEEP FOCUS. The book identifies Satyajit Ray, as a thinker, an analyst and writer apart from being a film maker. You come to know about the evolution of Regional Bengali cinema and what the artists of those times used for inspiration. Not much of a guess work there, it is also a reflection on the works of parallel Hollywood movies and the competition it posed to Bengali cinema.

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The  book brings alive the award winning movie " Pather Panchali" which has been made from a Bengali classic and the trilogy that followed. Ray describes in depth, how the movie was conceived and made . It comes forth as a living representation of the person Satyajit Ray himself, not to mention that it seemed to be his pet project , a much loved brain child. He highlights everything from ground work, to camera work  to the trials and tribulations that come along with an acclaimed international award for the movie. The still black and white pictures of the movie make the reading experience enchanting and so does the thought process Ray mentions he goes through while working. 

It also appears from his essays that he indeed is in love with the instrument of the camera as he appreciates detailed aspects of using the device in various ways and the technology that follows and is adapted. This love for evolving technology is evident and understandable as we are talking about the time when silent cinema transforms to sound and still pictures to continuously moving images. As any artist or technician would appreciate the ease in work which technology brings, Ray cannot hide his passion and enthusiasm for the instrument.

Included also are chapters on the research done by Ray on older than the old years of how the moving picture came into being and is where it is today. He compels the reader to think about cinema as an art and not a mere way of entertainment or story telling. He takes the pains to bring the average movie goer to go through the nuances of camera angles, light focus , background music and slow scenes, converting the reader into somewhat of a critic.

The revelation that Satyajit Ray was an artist, designed the lobby cards and film posters himself and was amongst one of the best story writer for children of times is astounding. We all think about our work and have our own way of describing it but putting it into such elaborate language with ample metaphors and deep insights requires commitment. His passion for his work outlives the commercial success. Ray has made a film called " The Adventures of Goopy Gyne and Bagha Byne" , a comedy without a love story or a central character. Wow. 

Post read, it makes me go out in search of a DVD of " Pather Panchali" , "Apur Sansar" and "Aparijito". Though I don't know whether I would be able to follow anything without subtitles, but worth a try. The language is rich, the content clear and the sketches made by Ray speak volumes. A slightly different but profound experience put together.

A must read for a student of cinema or any art, it is a delightful experience for any movie lover. I for one was not aware of any of his works or any work of that age for that matter, but the book came as a pleasant surprise with its multiple metaphors and lovely language. Since it compels the reader to think , it is not a book you cannot just keep down. It is a slow read, but extremely well compiled and edited. The flow is maintained throughout and though it can be a little monotonous on some notes, it is a wonderful book. 

Remembering Tagore: The Broken Nest- Charulata

Charulata

 - Kiran Manral

My introduction to Tagore came about rather late, when Doordarshan showed a nightly retrospective of movies based on Rabindranath Tagore’s work. And one night, I settled down to watch Charulata (adapted from Nashtanirh). The story of a woman caught between a husband who is steeped in his work, older than her, and seemingly uncaring and her sudden incandescent fascination with a young man in her house, her husband’s cousin was delicately depicted and sensitively handled by the director. At that point I marveled at the insight into the workings of a woman’s mind that had led the Poet Laureate to write this character, and the situation she finds herself in, when to all outward appearances she has a perfectly comfortable life. And there was Madhabi Mukherjee playing Charulata, the upper crust lady, blessed with a perfectly expressive face that hovered between the woman of the world and the ingénue, she was every bored housewife, wanting to spark up her life, thirsting for appreciation.

The original title given by Tagore in Bengali, meaning The Broken Nest, is much more evocative than the simple name Ray chose to title his film. The nest, the home, in this case, metaphorically speaking, isn’t a nest at all, because Charulata doesn’t have children to occupy her. She lives with her husband, an intellectual at the height of the Bengal cultural renaissance in the late nineteenth century, who is older, more mature and has a newspaper to run, and therefore little time to give his young wife. The opening sequence of Charulata sets the tone of the movie, a woman, running from window to window of her huge mansion like house, watching the world pass outside her courtyard with opera glasses, evocative of both her boredom and her restlessness. We get a sense of her feeling trapped in her domestic situation. Her husband passes her, and walks past her without even noticing her, so engrossed is he in a book. And as he passes by, she looks at him with the same opera glasses she was looking at the outside world with. At that moment, with that gesture, the viewer knows that there is an estrangement and a distance between the husband and wife, which is leading to a restlessness yet to be fulfilled.

While she does have a huge house to run, it is efficiently staffed leaving her with effectively nothing to do. Enter her husband’s cousin, Amal, younger, more towards Charulata’s age, interested in poetry, indulgent towards her literary pretensions and ambitions, and the inevitable happens. Charulata falls for him. Amal is reluctant to encourage this, naturally, given the circumstances he is in, and Charulata experiences a minor triumph when a short story she has written gets published in a local publication. The movie shows Amal going away abruptly to end Charulata’s infatuation with him, and her husband’s realization of her feelings for his young cousin. The film ends with Bhupathi returning home after wandering around aimlessly, hurt and bewildered and Charulata’s tentative reaching out to him, but the hands donot meet, implicit in the message that the nest has been irretrievably broken. In the movie, Ray discards Tagore’s original ending which had Bhupathi saying he was going out of town, and Charulata asking him to take her with him. And then sensing his hesitation, she tells him to let it be. Their relationship is, to all purposes, now over.

Charulata was the film of which Ray said that had he to make it again, he wouldn’t change a single thing. And indeed, it had the kind of perfection when all elements in the film, every little detail, come together harmoniously.

I am shamed to say, I still have to read the book though it has been on my to read list ever since I saw this movie. Maybe, this year, I should rectify that.

(Kiran Manral is a writer, blogger, social activist. She is also the Creative Head  at Karma Communications, Mumbai)

Remembering Tagore: Teen Kanya

Tagore's short story "The Postmaster" is ostensibly a simple story - that of a young man Nandalal, whose comfortable life in the lap of his family in Calcutta is disrupted by a transfer to a village post office. As expected, nothing measures up to his expectations - the job, the immediate environment and most important the people . He fails to appreciate the beauty of rural Bengal, he pines for home and family . Having nothing in common with the villagers, the only ray of weak sunshine is the general factotum of his one man household - the orphan child Ratan , who cooks ,cleans and nurses him through a bout of malaria . He teaches the girl to teach , chats with her about his family and in the process livens up his life and offers a ray of hope to Ratan who , bereft of any love dreams of becoming a part of his family .Ratan's little tryst with hope and happiness is shattered when Nandalal gets a transfer back to the city and as compensation to Ratan, without an inkling of the fantastic dreams she has conjured up , offers her a generous tip which she is too proud to accept . A simple story , no doubt, ordinary even but lifted to a level of excellence in characterisation and situational narratives that could only come from Tagore .

The film by Satyajit Ray stars Anil Chatterjee as the whining, complaining postmaster Nandalal who cannot reconcile himself to his new environment and Chandana Banerjee as the orphan girl Ratan. The camera almost caresses the serene beauty of rural Bengal . Ray who had a magic touch with child actors (think Apu-Durga in Pather Panchali,Apu's son in Apur Sansar and the little boys in the Feluda films ) extracts a stellar performance from Ratan who conveys more with her expressive eyes than through dialogue . When the postmaster, ecstatic with joy at his transfer forgets all promises made to the child during their long evenings together , there is a proud and quiet dignity in her moment of epiphany when she realises that people do not mean what they promise on impulse and so she withdraws into herself , treating the tip he gives her with the scorn his action deserves -that money is not the alternative to what she craves - a sense of belongingness , security and a family to call her own .

Ray's treatment of Manihara is pure Gothic. The film opens with the village schoolmaster crossing the ruins and gardens of a house to the ghat on the river which lies beyond , carrying with him his opium pipe and a manuscript . On the steps of the ghat he meets a man draped in a shawl sitting on a lower step, strikes a conversation with him and narrates the story of the people who had lived in the house beyond. The young man is played by Kali Banerjee and his wife by Kanika Majumdar.

We meet Manimala's feet first, shod in elegant velvet slippers and then we see her almost ethereally beautiful face and the exquiste muslin sari she wears. Phanibhushan is besotted with her beauty and would like to claim her entire being but she eludes him. Besotted by her lust for jewels and terrified that her husband would use them to save himself from financial ruin, she plans to go to her paternal house and recruits her rascally distant relative and ex lover, played in a brilliant cameo by the young Kumar Roy , to take her there . For a moment she hesitates because her husband has promised her jewels on his return, if he is successful but the survival of her jewels is uppermost and flinging her keys on the bed she departs .She never returns - except as a wraith, trying twice to enter and failing and finally succeeding on a full moon light , drawn by the promise of the jewellery .

Besides being a ghost story , it deals on different levels with power , pride, possessions, lust , craving and dissatisfaction and a deep sorrow .A sense of impermanence pervades the film , the river a metaphor for change and havoc in the lives of the couple .

The subtle play of light and shadows and the strains of the song “Baajey Karuno shurey “ interspersed with the haunting cry of the curlews creates an evocative atmosphere and brings out the gothic component very forcefully .

Kanika Majumdar’s Manimala is distant -her eyes are constantly searching , her head cocked to one side as if she is listening to a distant song . She is brittle and delicate. Her eyes glitter with a febrile intensity as she becomes temporarily insane, runs her hands through her jewels and adorns herself with them before preparing to run away . The jewels her husband plies her with and which she guards fiercely are a substitute for a deeper craving.

In the short space of about an hour we are caught up by brilliant performances and tremendous cinematography - almost a distillation of a larger canvas done in miniature.

In a sense Samapti or The Ending is the lightest in texture and mood and peppered with a great deal of humour . The story of a girl’s transition from unmarried bliss to marriage – a story of coming of age – the confusions, the ensuing hilarity, perception of mockery of the institution of marriage are played out consummately by Soumtira Chatterji and a very young Aparna Sen who transcends the boundaries of a tall gangling teenager to a woman who realizes what marriage, affinity and love could mean. Ray’s superb touches are there in the scene where Mrinmoyee discards her wedding bed , social norms and shackles to run away and play on her swing in the moonlight , each upward propelling motion reflecting itself in the sheer joy of living that only freedom can gift , the puzzled expressions on the girl’s face when she cannot decipher what she is required to do as a married woman – a set of rules , customs and bindings which have no meaning and the moment of realization when she perceives that she loves the man she is married to .

Tagore’s sensitivity and his exploration of the feminine mystique were far beyond his times. Ray has captured each nuance of his sensitivity and translated them on to celluloid with such consummate mastery that even if one were one not to read Tagore in the original, it would be a stepping stone to understand this Renaissance man.

(Mallika Ganguly works in an Oil PSU, her life revolves around her family and friends. She is also an amateur photographer besides being a blogger and a farmville addict! She blogs at eveslungs.blogspot.com . )