Satyajit Ray's Final Offerings

1984

About forty years of filmmaking, with a film a year, was interrupted by his fragile health in the mid-1980s. Ray’s Ghare-Baire (Home and the World, 1984) based on a novel by Rabindranath Tagore, was a return to his first screen adaptation. While shooting, he suffered two heart attacks and his son, Sandip Ray, completed the project from his detailed instructions.

1984-1992

Ill health kept Satyajit Ray away from active filmmaking for about four years. In 1989, he resumed making films with Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People as the basis for his Ganashatru (Enemy of the People, 1989). This was followed with Shakha Prashakha (Branches of the Tree, 1990) and Agantuk (The Stranger, 1991).

This series of three films were to be his last. Many film critics and film historians found these films a marked departure from his earlier work.

In 1992, He accepted a Lifetime Achievement Oscar from his sickbed in Calcutta through a special live satellite-television event and Bharat Ratna (the Jewel of India), the ultimate honour from India.

Satyajit Ray died on April 23, 1992.

Satyajit Ray on the sets of Ganashatru, 1989 ©Denis Darzacq
Satyajit Ray on the sets of Ganashatru, 1989 ©Denis Darzacq