Build up
The issue
on serious cinema is that it is serious. A penchant for serious cinema is
hardly developed in the prime of youth especially during the teenage. My
teenage cinema obsession started with soft porn in the shady allies of Kolkata.
That was the natural instinct of the youth growing up in a non-internet era and
without the resources to watch VCDs at home.
I always
thought and still think that porn is therapeutic. And preventive. Especially
for people not that close to companionship of other sexes. A lot of sexual
crime perhaps could have been prevented if everyone subscribed to this view. But
anyways at the age of 14-15 I was not thinking much. There was a lot more to do
than think.
The shady
seats in the broken halls in the shady corners of the city were the most sought
after places for rowdy school-boys like me. On display used to be non-English European
movies which were high on skin content. Sometime porn clips were inserted into
otherwise clean movies. With police looking the other way in return for some
tips the soft porn industry in the city was booming. And our sex education was
happening on an accelerated albeit twisted route.
Somewhere
in the middle of all this I never realized how the structure of good cinema had
crept into my being. Through the window or a hidden corner somewhere. I started
having judgments and started to understand my choices and preferences of the
kind of cinema I wanted to watch. I remember an incident where I had a heated
argument on the triangular freak show called Sayan when someone claimed that it
was a more “mature" love-story than dil hai ki manta nahin. Both were
bollywood potboilers. But one was a freak show which people today will laugh
at. The other was a lift from one of the most engaging love-stories of all
times. The very fact that I had a point of view was surprising. The fact that
it was a year or 2 after watching Maine pyar kiya 7 times was shocking.
The east European
cinema in the garb of soft porn had helped....
Something
happened....
(Ray’s death and
implications)
Something
happened....
My life
in bliss of academics, experimentation with dark elements and porn cinema was
going along well enough as my higher secondary exams approached. A broken
relationship and some bizarre experiences had shaken a bit of my equilibrium of
existence. But overall it was a healthy existence in isolation with life
rolling on towards the finite direction of engineering/medical entrance and
college admissions. The HS exams went on as expected. And then something
happened....
They say
that when a big event happens the repercussions of the same is experienced by
so many small common people which never gets noticed or accounted for. When Ray
was holding his Oscar and communicating through the screen in the Oscar night I
was sitting in front of TV with the realization of the hugeness of this person
dawning on me for the first time. Till then he was this person who was a big
filmmaker as per people around and everyone used to go gaga over his movies. I
loved his Feluda and the GooGaBaBa series more. Had not seen much else.
Then this
whole Oscar thing (Oscars till then was the biggest thing in movies for me)
really gave me the perspective.
Ray died
shortly after this. By then my exams were over. And for the first time I was
free in life without any homework or any assignment to complete. The initial
days of continuous TV watching exposed me to the world of ray with a 24/7
coverage of him, his life and his work. Kolkata and Bengal was like a melting
pot flowing over with emotion in losing their last horseman of the famed Bengali
renaissance. The last flag bearer of the great modern cultural upsurge for
which Bengal was known for. And here I was sitting in front of the TV absorbing
all of it and realizing how big the man was.
In the
coming weeks my life was all about ray's interviews, others talking about ray
and most importantly the cinema of ray. While I ran around and started
collecting every piece of document available on the man in magazines,
newspapers and subsequently books, the most things which hit me about him was
his cinema. DD Kolkata screened each and every piece of cinema which ray had
made. Every day at 5pm. every day at 5pm my world around stopped. My world
inside the world of ray came alive for those few hours. The world of apu, the
world of Feluda, the world of arati, the world of bishwambhar roy, the world of
paresh babu.....and so many others...
A few
years later I had the fortune of watching a movie which was about a boy and an
old man losing themselves in the joys of cinema in a rundown theatre somewhere
in Italy. For me those days the 5pm appointments with the television were no
less. It was that time of day everyday where life ahead of me was unfolding. Regardless
of what profession I chose it was getting firmly cemented somewhere inside my
being that cinema was going to be playing a very critical role in my life. As I
had said in the beginning- when big events happen the repercussions travel far
beyond the imagination of those events and people.
*
* *
I am not
here to write an autobiography. So I will end my indulgence into personal
history here and now. I thought it was important to mention the impact which
the person whose cinema I want to talk about had on my life and how. So that
that and now we continue.
It’s
funny. Who am I to talk about cinema of ray? Why should I have the audacity of
actually writing about one of the greatest film makers the world has seen? Do I
know or appreciate cinema better than him or even close to him? The answer to
all these questions and doubts is obviously negative. after months of uncertainty
and lack of clarity I have reconciled to the fact as mentioned in an earlier
post- I write as a fan, a dreamy kid whose wonder world of fairy tales is woven
around in the world of 35mm. ray for me has been and will always be the
life-starter. In many ways I started living after ray happened. He happened
through his death. Ironic...
Cinema
of ray
The last
few movies of ray talked about a world from which beauty was getting alienated.
Shakha proshakha was about the disjointed family, ganashatru on Ibsen’s enemy
of the people, and the final bow of the great man- Agantuk all dealt with the
theme of social alienation. However the man started with a completely different
approach to the world.
*
* *
The trilogy
Pather
panchali was not the first film which I saw of ray. In fact it was also not the
first of the apu trilogy which I saw. Yet, when I ended up seeing pather
panchali I was both shaken and stirred like the martini in the hand of Mr. Bond.
After having seen many complicated "intelligent" forms of
story-telling on screen the sheer straight-forwardness of ray in telling the
original story of human-kind was enlightening. The characters in pather
panchali could have been nova rich for all we cared. The story was really not
about their struggle or their poverty. The story more was about the fact that
life in any condition has its share of laughter, joy, sorrow, love and hatred. And
that it ends. And that the same is not in our hands. And there is no point
over-dramatizing the various facets of our lives.
Just like
the scene where sarbajaya reveals durga's death to harihar and pierces our
heart without the use of a single dialogue, in the same way durga and apu's
discovery of the train for the first time brings out an unexpected thrill
without any hi-tech complex plot-point. And the fact is that is the way life
goes. A train of simple events which take a lifetime to complete. Before we
make our passing. Dignity comes from accepting the same and making the best
that we have. The beautiful trilogy of apu talks about a simple life of a
simple man with simple dreams. And yet it makes such an engaging story.
The most
endearing quality of Bibhutibhushan's literature has been his celebration of
the common man heroism. The common place thrill. His description of his first
night in the jungle in aranyak was magical as it was like a kid seeing a
fairytale for the first time. Bibhutibhusan throughout has been that kid.
Discovering gems in everyday life. Gems of happiness, sadness, hatred love and
so many other tapestries of human emotions and experiences.
There has
been a section of critics who have criticized PP and other Ray films for show
of poverty. They have thereby shown their ignorance and stupidity. For all anyone
cares the characters of the trilogy could have been from middle or
upper-middleclass, the reality of their lives would not have changed much. The
story of apu was anything but poverty. It was the story of little nuggets of
courage and heroism in adversity. And as I said- the fact the life keeps
flowing in its own pace and direction and we humans just play our roles.
My favorite
of the trilogy is aparajito. It is the least celebrated work in the trilogy,
but it affected me the most. Perhaps because of the age I saw it. Aparajito was
apu's adolescence and journey into adulthood. The boy who loses his sister as a
kid and his father before he can grow up. the boy who has the courage to move
to the big city and then the boy who is torn between his urge to move on in
life and his love and longing for his mother who has no strength left to go
along. The final scene of the movie is liberating as well as devastating. The
young soul torn between his need to grieve the loss of the last and the closest
of his family and the realization that he is finally free. The cruelness of our
options in life plays out in matter of fact simplicity and hypnotizes us into
reflection of our own world and our choices.
Till date
aparijito remains the ultimate growing up film for me. Urges of youth, the
heartbreak of age all are too real and yet so serene.
