13/07/2017
Designed Exclusively By : Sanchari Bhattacharya
Exclusively Attributed By : Sanchari Bhattacharya Editions
A Prestigious Tribute To : Satyajit Roy Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray’s 'Nayak' turns 51 this year. Here is an understanding of how it sought to reveal the darker elements of its star protagonist’s
personality.
In Nayak, Uttam Kumar plays Arindam Mukherjee with such poise and ease that it appears as if he is portraying his own life on the celluloid. Ray
gives us a vulnerable hero hiding behind his cocky, larger-than-life façade. And, Kumar, to his credit, never misses a note during his challenging
portrayal. He is well complemented by Sharmila Tagore who plays the character of Aditi to a tee. Aditi is the only person Arindam opens up to; the
tantalizing conversations between the two characters offer some great food for thought. Ray uses the various interactions between the co-
passengers to make us realize that the hypocrisies and follies of a star are not much different from that of an ordinary man. A few other characters
in the movie merely provide a morality check. Nayak, a 1966 Bangla drama film written and directed by Satyajit Ray, presents the tale of a movie
idol, Arindam Mukherjee, who despite his fame and success is haunted by solitude and a sense of guilt. Although, Arindam hasn't yet tasted failure,
the very thought of it fills his heart with grave fear and premonitions. He has had female companions but still pines for true love. He has all the
materialistic pleasures at his disposal but is robbed off his mental peace. And, typically, he is both a compulsive smoker and an alcoholic.
"Nayak is a testament to Satyajit Ray's remarkable range as a filmmaker par excellence."
While on a train from Calcutta to Delhi to receive an award, Arindam meets a female journalist, Aditi Sengupta, who has little regard for movie
stars. Aditi wants to interview him but she is least interested in printing what everyone already knows about the matinee idol. So, she blatantly asks
him to reveal his true, darker self to her. He, however, dismisses her, saying that he doesn't want to self-destruct his goody-goody image in front of
his market. But, Arindam soon begins to regret the missed opportunity to finally unload his burden. He then sees a dream wherein he gets drowned
in a quicksand of money. When he finally wakes us, he feels uneasy, and, out of desperation, approaches Aditi to start a conversation about his
rather oblivious past, leaving himself completely exposed in front of her.
Satyajit Ray film sought to explore, one that was appropriately named Nayak (The Hero). Ray’s mild dislike for mainstream cinema was reflected in
his conception of the hero, Arindam Mukherjee (played by the biggest screen idol of Bengali cinema, Uttam Kumar). Presenting Arindam as a
talented but compromising social climber, Ray was introducing the average middle-class viewer to the human self that lay behind the facade of a
star.
Arindam, having achieved stardom in fairly quick time, is plagued by a sense of emptiness that erupts in violent outbursts. And conscious of the
necessity to preserve the countenance of a ‘star’, he decides to take a train journey with upper middle-class passengers -- of the kind likely to
constitute his audiences and for whom he has great disregard. The journey has a wizened journalist who holds cinema in contempt; an advertising
professional whose wife is keen to get into cinema; and a starry-eyed, young fan. We, the audiences, get to probe into Arindam’s psyche through
Aditi (Sharmila Tagore) a writer, an editor of a ‘serious’ newspaper called Adhunik (Modern). And though she believes that Bengali cinema lacks
connection with reality (Vaastavikta ka obhaav), she is interested in interviewing its biggest star, if only to increase the circulation figures of her
paper.
The movie begins with the unravelling of a neatly-arranged series of stripes that leads us to Arindam, or rather, his screen image. We see the back of
his head first, then his hands and legs as he gets ready for travel, and finally, when a friend criticises his work in a recent movie, his face. This screen
image of a star, when stripped of its infallibility, reveals itself as a human face in the course of the movie.Arindam’s willingness to exorcise his past
demons leads him, unwittingly, to reveal his gullibility to Aditi, a young journalist least enamoured by his work. It is therapeutic for him; it makes
him reminisce and let out inconvenient elements from his past. It is revelatory for her; it helps her realise that a ‘hero’ -- a Krishna with the ability to
woo gopis both on and off the screen -- could have a dark past and yet lend himself to empathy. Their journeys end as they begin -- him putting on
his glasses and getting lost in the crowd of welcoming hosts on the railway station; her finding her way out through the maze because of the clarity
inherent in her thought.The film also revealed the hollowness intrinsic to a lot of mainstream Indian cinema of the late 1960s, viewed through the
eyes of Ray. Seen as a medium of escape for viewers and an easy way to move up the ladder for actors, it was devoid of a social core, of the kind
present in the cinema of the 50s. Hence, Arindam is willing to grab his chance to graduate from stage to screen but doesn’t want to help a struggling
actress do the same. He is willing to anonymously help a friend fund his political movement but averse to getting involved in politics himself. If his
cinema lacks reality, his real life lacks an intellectual core. Drunk on success and fame but unsure of what to do with the plenty of riches he has
accumulated, he takes to abusing his power by indulging in brawl with a fellow actor.
My favourite scene of the movie is that of Arindam’s first dream -- where he seems himself getting sucked into the vortex of his own wealth, with
even his revered mentor, Shankar-da, not in a position to help him, It is this that makes him come face-to-face with the void inside and want to enter
into a semi-confessional mode.Ray wanted to present Uttam Kumar not as an actor but as a phenomenon, says Andrew Robinson in his biography
of the master. However, while doing so, he also wanted the viewer to see the human side of the lead character, Arindam, a star. “Ray was driven by a
desire first to investigate the psychology of a star, secondly the psychology of his adulators and detractors, and lastly, to make a film about a train
journey,” says Robinson. The curious eyes of Aditi, an empathetic journalist provide the right window to investigate Arindam’s psychology. And, as
if to tell the viewers that her purpose is fulfilled just by getting to know Arindam rather than writing about him, Ray makes her destroy the notes
she has taken down for a print interview. She’ll retain memories of the journey, but not want to write on it.Nayak, released in 1966, predated the
rise and fall of the first superstar of Hindi cinema Rajesh Khanna. Rising to the pinnacle at a very young age, not knowing how to handle his
popularity, falling with a resounding thud -- the star got consumed by his status. This was brilliantly captured, real-time, in a 1973 BBC
documentary, Bombay Superstar. Showing the ephemeral nature of success in show business, the film could be called a close, more explicit,
documentary cousin of Nayak. It was not just enlightening for the viewers, it was prophetic in the tone with which it announced the slow decline of
Khanna, or any star unsure of how to handle his crown.At the end of Nayak’s train journey, Arindam is a little more aware of his fallibility: that,
though none of his films have failed, it will be a matter of “three flops” -- as was the case with Mukunda Lahiri, another icon -- before he fails. His
self-realisation makes an average viewer a little more familiar with the fickleness of the show business that is cinema.
Overall, Nayak is a powerful work of cinema that like most films of Satyajit Ray remains as relevant today, almost five decades after its release, as it
was back in the 60s. Nayak is not an easy movie to watch. Unlike most other Ray films which require patience, Nayak requires composure. There
are scenes of such enormous power in Nayak that a faint-hearted will get jitters while watching it. Ray's use of dream sequences to make the
narrative more evocative puts him up there with the likes of Bunuel, Kurosawa, Bergman, and Fellini. Nayak is certainly a film that every student of
cinema ought to watch. It also serves as a great overture to Ray's formidable body of work.Satyajit Ray became the first, and currently only, Indian to receive an Honorary Academy Award in 1992.
In 1983, while working on Ghare Baire (Home and the World), Ray suffered a heart attack; it would severely limit his productivity in the
remaining 9 years of his life. Ghare Baire was completed in 1984 with the help of Ray's son (who operated the camera from then on) because of his
health condition. He had wanted to film this Tagore novel on the dangers of fervent nationalism for a long time, and wrote a first draft of a script
for it in the 1940s.In spite of rough patches due to Ray's illness, the film did receive some critical acclaim. It had the first kiss fully portrayed in
Ray's films. In 1987, he made a documentary on his father, Sukumar Ray.
Ray's last three films, made after his recovery and with medical strictures in place, were shot mostly indoors, and have a distinctive style. They have
more dialogue than his earlier films and are often regarded as inferior to his earlier body of work.The first, Ganashatru (An Enemy of the People) is
an adaptation of the famous Ibsen play, and considered the weakest of the three.Ray recovered some of his form in his 1990 film Shakha Proshakha
(Branches of the Tree).In it, an old man, who has lived a life of honesty, comes to learn of the corruption of three of his sons. The final scene shows
the father finding solace only in the companionship of his fourth son, who is uncorrupted but mentally ill. Ray's last film, Agantuk (The Stranger),
is lighter in mood but not in theme. When a long-lost uncle arrives to visit his niece in Calcutta, he arouses suspicion as to his motive. This
provokes far-ranging questions in the film about civilisation.
In 1992, Ray's health deteriorated due to heart complications. He was admitted to a hospital, but never recovered. The Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences awarded him an Honorary Academy Award. Ray is the first and the only Indian, yet, to receive the honor. Twenty-four days
before his death, Ray accepted the award in a gravely ill condition, calling it the "Best achievement of [his] movie-making career." He died on 23
April 1992 at the age of 71.
Film craft
Satyajit Ray considered script-writing to be an integral part of direction. Initially he refused to make a film in any language other than Bengali. In
his two non-Bengali feature films, he wrote the script in English; translators interpreted it in Hindi or Urdu under Ray's supervision. Ray's eye for
detail was matched by that of his art director Bansi Chandragupta. His influence on the early films was so important that Ray would always write
scripts in English before creating a Bengali version, so that the non-Bengali Chandragupta would be able to read it. The craft of Subrata Mitra
garnered praise for the cinematography of Ray's films. A number of critics thought that his departure from Ray's crew lowered the quality of
cinematography in the following films.Though Ray openly praised Mitra, his single-mindedness in taking over operation of the camera after
Charulata caused Mitra to stop working for him after 1966. Mitra developed "bounce lighting", a technique to reflect light from cloth to create a
diffused, realistic light even on a set. Ray acknowledged his debts to Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut of the French New Wave for
introducing new technical and cinematic innovations.
Ray's regular film editor was Dulal Datta, but the director usually dictated the editing while Datta did the actual work. Because of financial reasons
and Ray's meticulous planning, his films were mostly cut in-camera (apart from Pather Panchali). At the beginning of his career, Ray worked with
Indian classical musicians, including Ravi Shankar, Vilayat Khan, and Ali Akbar Khan. He found that their first loyalty was to musical traditions,
and not to his film. He had a greater understanding of Western classical forms, which he wanted to use for his films set in an urban milieu.
Starting with Teen Kanya, Ray began to compose his own scores.
He used actors of diverse backgrounds, from famous film stars to people who had never seen a film (as in Aparajito).Robin Wood and others have
lauded him as the best director of children, pointing out memorable performances in the roles of Apu and Durga (Pather Panchali), Ratan
(Postmaster) and Mukul (Sonar Kella). Depending on the talent or experience of the actor, Ray varied the intensity of his direction, from virtually
nothing with actors such as Utpal Dutt, to using the actor as a puppet (Subir Banerjee as young Apu or Sharmila Tagore as Aparna). Actors who
had worked for Ray praised his customary trust but said he could also treat incompetence with total contempt.
