Satyajit Ray – Auteur Extraordinaire (Part 1)

Satyajit Ray was a Renaissance Man – a versatile genius of immense capabilities. A towering personality, he wasn’t just one of the great auteurs of world cinema, but also a prolific writer, a brilliant illustrator, and an exceptional composer among others. Born to a family of literary giants, Ray is a cultural icon like few others.‘Genius’ is such an overused word that it has perhaps ceased to hold the gravitas that it should; or worse still, at times it even ends up sounding shallow and clichéd. But then one ends up getting acquainted with someone (not necessarily personally) when one ends up feeling at such a loss of words that the only epithet one seems to be left with is ‘genius’. Satyajit Ray was easily one such personality. In fact I would go further and say he was arguably the most versatile genius of post-colonial India, the tentacles of whose abilities were so widespread that even with a single of those traits he would still fall within the purview of a ‘genius’. Allow me to explain.

Ray was born in a family the kind of which is rare to find. His grandfather Upendrakishore Raychowdhury was one of the finest children’s writers of his time. He translated Ramayana and Mahabharata into easy, lucid Bengali thus immediately freeing the two immense epics of their formidable status. This helped in endearing them to kids (including me when I was one) who otherwise wouldn’t have dared to touch them. He also wrote many short stories for children, including Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha), which was later turned into a movie by his grandson – more on that later. Literature apart, he was also a painter, a composer and an exceptional violin player. He was a good friend of Rabindranath Tagore, and during their ‘adda’ sessions Tagore would sing while Upendrakishore would play the violin. Interestingly, he had started a magazine called ‘Sandesh’ (which means ‘sweet’ as well as ‘news’), and since the printing standards weren’t very good then, he founded ‘U. Ray & Sons’ for that purpose.

 Ray’s father Sukumar was another incredible talent. India’s greatest creator of nonsense verse or literary nonsense, his ability ranked alongside such masters of this art form as Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. His mastery over the Bengali language and its idiom was such that his stories and poems were, in equal measures, great entertainment for the kids, and amazing satires (political as well as social) and even of profound psychological depths for the adults. His sense of humour could be easily gauged from a club he had founded – Monday Club, which was essentially a play on the word ‘Monda’ (Bengali for delicious sweets) to proclaim his epicurean desires. He was also a playwright and an illustrator. Unfortunately he fell prey to the then fatal disease of ‘Kalazhar’ (Leishmaniasis) and died at the young age of 36. His son was barely 3 then, yet his profound effect on him was palpable in his works. When one is born in such a family, it is but natural to genetically as well as sociologically inherit abilities that mere mortals can only crave for. Ray imbibed the genius of his father and grandfather, and then some more. He was a polymath if there ever was one. In fact, to use the more appropriate term, Ray was a Renaissance Man, an epithet used for such luminaries as Leonardo Da Vinci and Rabindranath Tagore. Most people know him as a filmmaker par excellence – for the record, he was the greatest maker of motion pictures that India has ever had. But what many do not know, his talents covered nearly every field that falls within the domain of ‘Arts’ – literature, music, painting/illustration, photography and criticism. Apart from Charlie Chaplin I doubt if there ever was a filmmaker who touched so many aspects of filmmaking – apart from directing his movies (feature films, documentaries and short films), he wrote their screenplays, composed their background scores (except for his first few movies), made storyboards for his characters, sets and costumes – illustrated to the last detail, designed posters and publicity materials, and even wrote the lyrics and composed music for the songs for his musicals. And when he wasn’t adapting his screenplays from source materials (including his own), the stories, too, were written by him. Acting was perhaps the only thing he never tried his hands in. Hence it was but natural for such a versatile figure to have Chaplin as one of his greatest idols.

Ray’s movies are spread across a plethora of genres, styles, tones and themes. Internationally he is best known for his groundbreaking debut feature Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road), in particular, and the Apu Trilogy, in general, which also comprised of Aparajito (The Unvanquished) and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu). Adapted from Bibhutibhshan Bandopadhyay’s novel (incidentally, which he had illustrated before he turned a filmmaker), Apu Trilogy was in the form of a Bildungsroman – it covered the life of Apu from his childhood through adolescence to adulthood, from doe-eyed innocence to world weary cynicism, from simple joys and tears of rural upbringing to shades and complications of urban life. The lyrical beauty, pathos, simplicity and humanism in these movies immediately shot him to stratospheric heights and into the realms of great masters of world cinema like Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Jean-Luc Godard and John Ford – auteurs he greatly admired and respected. He had pledged all he had during the making of Pather Panchali, perhaps he knew all along that it would turn out to be a special movie. .

Continue to Part 2 >>