 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Cineaste
magazine interview with Satyajit Ray
Cineaste: How did Pather Panchali change you. Did it help you
discover Bengal?
Satyajit Ray: I certainly discovered
rural life while making Pather Panchali. There's no question of that.
I'd been city-born, city-bred, so I didn't know the village firsthand.
While hunting locations in rural areas, and, after finding the village
and spending some time there, I began to understand. Talking to people,
reacting to moods, to the landscape, to the sights and sounds—all
this helped. But it's not just people who have been brought up in
villages who can make films about village life. An outside view is
also able to penetrate.
Cineaste: What have been other influences
on your work?
Ray: Bibhuti Bhushan [the author of
The Apu Trilogy and Distant Thunder] influenced me very much. In fact,
I knew about village life by reading Pather Panchali. I felt a rapport
with him, with the village and his attitude towards it, which is one
of the reasons why I wanted to make Pather Panchali in the first place.
I was deeply moved by the book.
I have also been moved by Tagore's work, which is not necessarily
rural. Of course, our cultural background, our cultural makeup, is
a fusion of East and West. This applies to anybody who has been educated
in the city in India and who has been exposed to the classics of English
literature. After all, our knowledge of the West is deeper than the
Westerner's knowledge of our country. We have imbibed Western education.
Western music, Western art, Western literature have all been very
influential in India.
Film, as a purely technological medium of expression, developed in
the West. The concept of an art form existing in time is a Western
concept, not an Indian one. So, in order to understand cinema as a
medium, it helps if one is familiar with the West and Western art
forms. A Bengali folk artist, or a primitive artist, will not be able
to understand the cinema as an art form. Someone who has had a Western
education is definitely at an advantage.
Cineaste: Indian critics often contend
that Pather Panchali was a radical film because it completely altered
India's film economy. It proved that it was possible to make viable
films without studio patronage. Did the film really have an immediate
impact?
 Ray:
I don't think so. Although the audience and critics recognized the
film as a landmark of sorts, filmmakers weren't that quick to follow.
There was no immediate influence discernible in other directors' works.
That came much later. In the last five or six years, filmmakers coming
out of the Film Institute in Poona have acknowledged that they have
been influenced by Pather Panchali.
Cineaste: Are you surprised that your
films have been so well received outside of India?
Ray: I never imagined that any of my
films, especially Pather Panchali, would be seen throughout this country
or in other countries. The fact that they have is an indication that,
if you're able to portray universal feelings, universal relations,
emotions, and characters, you can cross certain barriers and reach
out to others, even non-Bengalis.
Cineaste: What is the most unsatisfying
film you've ever made?
 Ray:
The most unsatisfying film, Chiriakhana (The Zoo), is not being shown
in my current retrospective. For one thing, it was not a subject of
my choice. I was forced by circumstances to do it. Some of my assistants
were supposed to do the film, but they suddenly lost confidence and
asked me to take it on.
Chiriakhana's a whodunit, and whodunits just don't make good films.
I prefer the thriller form where you more or less know the villain
from the beginning. The whodunit always has this ritual concluding
scene where the detective goes into a rigmarole of how everything
happened, and how he found the clues which led him to the criminal.
It's a form that doesn't interest me very much.
Cineaste: What's been your most satisfying
film?
Ray: Well, the one film that I would
make the same way, if I had to do it again, is Charulata. There are
other films, such as Days and Nights in the Forest, which I also admire.
Among the children's films, I like Joi Baba Felunath (The Elephant
God). It works very well. It's got wit. It's got film eye. It's got
a face, a very satisfying face, and some wonderful acting. I also
enjoy making the musical films because they give me a chance to compose
music. And they're commercially successful, which gives you a certain
kind of satisfaction. I like Kanchenjungha, too. That's probably because
it was my first original screenplay and a very personal film. It was
a good ten to fifteen years ahead of its time.
Cineaste: It has a fragmented narrative.
 Ray:
Yes. Our audience likes a central character, or a couple of central
characters with whom they can identify, and a story with a straight
narrative line. Kanchenjungha told the story of several groups of
characters and it went back and forth. You know, between group one,
group two, group three, group four, then back to group one, group
two, and so on. It's a very musical form, but it wasn't liked. The
reaction was stupid. Even the reviews were not interesting. But, looking
back now, I find that it is a very interesting film.
Cineaste: The women in your films tend
to be much stronger, more determined, more adaptable and resilient
than the men in your films. Is that a reflection of Bengali social
history?
Ray: That is often a reflection of what
the author has written, a confirmation of the author's point of view
expressed in the books on which the films are based. There have been
many strong women characters in Tagore and in Bankimchandra. But it
also reflects my own attitudes and personal experience of women.
Cineaste: Which is?
 Ray:
Although they're physically not as strong as men, nature gave women
qualities which compensate for that fact. They're more honest, more
direct, and by and large they're stronger characters. I'm not talking
about every woman, but the type of woman which fascinates me. The
woman I like to put in my films is better able to cope with situations
than men.
Cineaste: Is Charulata the archetypal
Ray woman?
Ray: Yes, she is.
Cineaste: Starting from The Music Room
and continuing on to The Chess Players, you go back and forth between
old culture and new culture, tradition and progress. Sometimes I get
the feeling that you are leaning toward tradition and the old culture
and are somewhat disapproving of what is new.
 Ray:
I don't disapprove of what is new in The Chess Players. There is a
very clear attitude expressed in the fact that the feudals are not
involved in what is happening around them. Although I am sympathetic
to the characters, there's also a clear suggestion that these people
are no good. But I am more interested in a way of life that is passing
and the representatives of that way of life. You can find the same
thing in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and it fascinates me.
Of course, you risk flogging a dead horse in saying that feudalism
is stupid and wrong. But you also feel for the characters in those
films. They're pathetic, like dinosaurs who don't realize why they're
being wiped out. There's a quality of pathos in that which interests
me.
Cineaste: Most Western critics feel
that your vision of India is a bleak and despairing one.
Ray: The Middleman is really the only
film of which that sort of remark can be made.
Cineaste: But others have found Days
and Nights in the Forest despairing.
 Ray:
I wouldn't call it such a despairing vision. Certain unpleasant truths
are expressed in it, but that is part of drama, it applies to all
kinds of films. You can analyze a Western film and find a very despairing
statement about Western values. You can't make happy films all the
time.
If you're making a film about problems, but you don't have a solution,
there's bound to be a despairing quality. In The Big City, both husband
and wife lose their jobs. There are no jobs around. They drift apart,
there is misunderstanding, and they come together again. But they
still don't have any jobs, and they may not have any for quite some
time, but that doesn't make it despairing.
The only bleak film I have made is The Middleman. There's no question
about that. I felt corruption, rampant corruption, all around. Everyone
talks about it in Calcutta. Everyone knows, for instance, that the
cement allotted to the roads and underground railroad is going to
the contractors who are building their own homes with it. The Middleman
is a film about that kind of corruption and I don't think there is
any solution.
Cineaste: You've often said that you
don't think it's right, important, or necessary for an artist to provide
answers or make judgments, to say that this is right and this is wrong.
You've stayed away from major political statements.
 Ray: I have made political statements
more clearly than anyone else, including Mrinal Sen. In Middleman
I included a long conversation in which a Congressite discusses the
tasks ahead. He talks nonsense, he tells lies, but his very presence
is significant. If any other director had made that film, that scene
would not have been allowed. But there are definitely restrictions
on what a director can say. You know that certain statements and portrayals
will never get past the censors. So why make them?
Cineaste: Given the political climate
in India, is the filmmaker's role one of passive observer or activist?
Ray:
Have you seen Hirak Rajar Deshe (The Kingdom of Diamonds)? There is
a scene of the great clean-up where all the poor people are driven
away. That is a direct reflection of what happened in Delhi and other
cities during Indira Gandhi's Emergency. In a fantasy like The Kingdom
of Diamonds, you can be forthright, but if you're dealing with contemporary
characters, you can be articulate only up to a point, because of censorship.
You simply cannot attack the party in power. It was tried in The Story
of a Chair and the entire film was destroyed. What can you do? You
are aware of the problems and you deal with them, but you also know
the limit, the constraints beyond which you just cannot go.
Cineaste: Some people see that as an
abdication of the filmmaker's social role. A number of critics, especially
those in Bengal, feel that you aren't political enough, that you can
go further, but that you just haven't tested your limits.
Ray: No, I don't think I can go any
further. It is very easy to attack certain targets like the establishment.
You are attacking people who don't care. The establishment will remain
totally untouched by what you're saying. So what is the point? Films
cannot change society. They never have. Show me a film that changed
society or brought about any change.
Cineaste: What about filmmakers such
as Leni Riefenstahl, who presented the Nazi version of the Aryan myth,
or Sergei Eisenstein, who used film as a tool of the revolution?
Ray:
Eisenstein aided a revolution that was already taking place. In the
midst of a revolution, a filmmaker has a positive role, he can do
something for the revolution. But, if there is no revolution, you
can do nothing.
Riefenstahl was helping a myth, the Nazi ideology, and the Nazis were
very strong at the time. In the early days of fascism, even the intellectuals
were confused. Tagore was led to believe that Mussolini was doing
something wonderful, playing a very positive role, until Romain Rolland
told him he was wrong, that he hadn't understood the full implications
of fascism.
Cineaste: How do you see your own social
role as filmmaker?
Ray: You can see my attitude in The
Adversary where you have two brothers. The younger brother is a Naxalite.
There is no doubt that the elder brother admires the younger brother
for his bravery and convictions. The film is not ambiguous about that.
As a filmmaker, however, I was more interested in the elder brother
because he is the vacillating character. As a psychological entity,
as a human being with doubts, he is a more interesting character to
me. The younger brother has already identified himself with a cause.
That makes him part of a total attitude and makes him unimportant.
The Naxalite movement takes over. He, as a person, becomes insignificant.
Cineaste: But can you make such a distinction
between ideological gestures and emotional gestures? Isn't the ideologue
also an intellectual being? How can you create such a dichotomy?
Ray:
Why not? I don't see why not. Anybody who identifies himself with
a movement is depending on directives from higher figures who are
dictating, controlling their movement. If you took the controlling
characters, that would be interesting. Then you could make a film
about the Naxalite movement, an Eisensteinian film about revolutionary
activity. But you cannot do that under the present circumstances in
India.
Cineaste: I am not the only one who
feels that you emphasize emotion. Robin Wood has written that you
are more interested in communicating emotional experiences than in
expressing ideas.
Ray: That's just not correct. One thing
that should be clearly discernible in my films is a strong moral attitude.
Cineaste: Is that a product of your
religious upbringing, of being Brahmo?
 Ray: I don't think so. I don't even
know what being Brahmo means. I stopped going to Brahmo Samaj around
the age of fourteen or fifteen. I don't believe in organized religion
anyway. Religion can only be on a personal level. I just find that
the moral attitude I demonstrate is more interesting than any political
attitude I could bring to my films.
Cineaste: Is the moral attitude sometimes
too simple? In Pikoo you seem to be suggesting that infidelity can
lead to a variety of problems, that changing social and sexual values
have hurt the social and family fabric.
 Ray:
Pikoo is a very complex film. It is a poetic statement which cannot
be reduced to concrete terms. One statement the film tries to make
is that, if a woman is to be unfaithful, if she is to have an extramarital
affair, she can't afford to have soft emotions towards her children,
or, in this case, her son. The two just don't go together. You have
to be ruthless. Maybe she's not ruthless to that extent. She's being
very Bengali. A European in the same circumstances would not behave
in the same way.
Cineaste: How did Charulata resolve
the problem of infidelity? She, as we are led to believe, went back.
Was she being unfaithful or just caught between....
 Ray: She was unfaithful but she was
also confused because the husband was good. He wasn't a rake. Charulata
probably felt sympathetic and was attempting to patch up the situation.
The husband realized too late that he himself was responsible for
what had happened. That is why at the end of the film there is the
suggestion that they will come together, but that it is too soon for
a reconciliation.
Cineaste: How much of your own sentiments
are in your characters? Reviewing Distant Thunder, Pauline Kael wrote,
"Ray has put something of himself into Gangacharan, something
of his own guilt, of weakness, of commitment." Is that accurate?
 Ray:
Critics forget that I'm basing the film on someone else's work that
already exists in another form. In Distant Thunder, Gangacharan is
very close to Bibhuti Bhushan's concept. The real question should
be whether the author himself had this feeling of guilt and weakness.
I'm not the originator of the story. Why drag me into it?
It's true, the fact that I have chosen to portray a character in a
certain way does imply a sense of identity and understanding. I understand
Gangacharan, his motivations, his behavior, his reactions. For me,
he is a believable, fully-rounded character, and his transformation
at the end is very moving, but he is not my reflection.
Cineaste: Are you suggesting that people
who don't read the books from which your films are made may have a
difficult time understanding or interpreting your films?
 Ray: Yes, in the sense that they tend
to ignore the original author completely. They're thinking of the
narrative as a total creation, from beginning to end, by the filmmaker,
and that is usually not true. I choose a story or a novel for certain
elements in it which appeal to me. In the process of writing the screenplay,
the theme may be modified, but most of the original elements will
be retained. Often the screenplay evolves as a criticism of the original.
After reading a story many times, you may feel that a certain character
would not behave the way the author has described, so some changes
are made. Once I have read a story and gotten to know it, I will leave
the story behind and start from scratch. At the end, if I find that
certain changes are convincing, I'll keep them and forget the original.
Cineaste: Some critics feel that you
romanticize poverty, that the poverty and misery in your films never
become ugly.
 Ray:
I think that Pather Panchali is fairly ruthless in its depiction of
poverty. The behavior of characters, the way that the mother behaves
towards the old woman, is absolutely cruel. I don't think anyone has
shown such cruelty to old people within a family. Distant Thunder
takes place in a very pretty setting and this is a point that Kael
makes, that Babita is a baby doll or something. She doesn't know that
some Brahmin wives in the villages were very beautiful.
Cineaste: Isn't the point in Distant
Thunder that a famine occurred without a scorched earth and starving
faces?
Ray: Yes, that's what happened during
that famine. It was only after everyone started coming into the cities
that it became clear that people could die of hunger even when there
had been a good harvest. That was the point of that particular famine.
As for my use of color, it came straight from the author's description—that
nature was very lush, that everything was physically beautiful, and,
yet, people were dying of hunger.
Cineaste: You, Fellini, Kurosawa, and
Bergman all started making films around the same time. Many critics
feel, however, that you have lagged behind, that you haven't taken
the aesthetic and narrative risks that Fellini or Bergman have taken.
As you come to the end of nearly thirty years of filmmaking, how do
you see your own career in comparison with others?
Ray:
I think I achieved maturity at a pretty early stage. It has been my
preoccupation to achieve as much density as possible within a superficially
simple narrative structure. I don't think of the Western audiences
when I make my films. I am thinking of my own audience in Bengal.
I am trying to take them along with me, and this I have succeeded
in doing. At the beginning, this audience was extremely unsophisticated.
They were used to trash or the naive Bengali film. You had to take
them along slowly. Sometimes you took a leap as in Kanchenjungha or
in Days and Nights in the Forest, and lost them.
These kinds of risks, especially in relation to their audiences, haven't
been taken by Bergman or Fellini. Bergman is fairly simple, although
he can be very austere and rigorous, and he is often aided by some
marvelous photography. As for Fellini, he seems to be making the same
film over and over again. There is a lot of bravura in his films,
in spite of the fact that he's not so interested in the stories, and
people go to see that bravura.
I can't do all that Bergman and Fellini do. I don't have their audiences
and I don't work in that kind of context. I have to contend with an
audience that is used to dross. I have worked with an Indian audience
for thirty years and, in that time, the general look of cinema hasn't
changed. Certainly not in Bengal. You'll find directors there are
so backward, so stupid, and so trashy that you'll find it difficult
to believe that their works exist alongside my films. I am forced
by circumstances to keep my stories on an innocuous level. What I
can do, however, is to pack my films with meaning and psychological
inflections and shades, and make a whole which will communicate a
lot of things to many people.
Source: Copyright 1982 by Dan Georgakas. Reprinted
by permission from The
Cineaste Interviews: On the Art and Politics of the Cinema. Georgakas,
Dan and Lenny Rubenstein, eds. Chicago: Lake View Press, 1982.
|
|
|
Buy this Book
The
Cineaste Interviews: On the Art and Politics of the Cinema. Georgakas,
Dan and Lenny Rubenstein, eds. Chicago: Lake View Press, 1982.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
