Stories, Ray-Imagined

In Kurosawa8217;s Throne of Blood, the birds from Birnam wood invade Macbeth8217;s castle. Satyajit Ray thought it was a brilliant idea 8212; a classic re-imagination of Shakespeare8217;s plot of the forests on the prowl. 8220;Well, the trees obviously had birds nesting in them, and the birds obviously had to go somewhere, so I made them invade the castle,8221; quipped the Japanese master.

Literature. Film. Two mediums, disparate in approach, yet harbouring similar aspirations of artistic spontaneity, aesthetics and intellectual integrity. They feed on each other, at times to the point of conflict, but the end result is unique, spawning fresh questions and coming up with new answers to old queries.

Ray was comfortable balancing the two, maybe because he was both writer and filmmaker 8212; 25 of his films are based on existing stories he tweaked and changed as he deemed fit. 8220;When I am using someone else8217;s story, it means that I find some aspects of the story attractive for certain reasons. These aspects are always evident in the film. Others which I find unsatisfactory are either left out or modified to suit my needs. I do not give thought to purists who rage at departure from the original.8221;

This exposition in Our Films, Their Films has been the cornerstone of Ray8217;s oeuvre. From the timeless Pather Panchali and intimate Teen Kanya, to the gut-wrenching Pratidwandi and the chiselled perfection of Charulata, Ray managed, as few filmmakers can, to dissect the merits and demerits of his material vis-a-vis a cinematic transformation and then proceeded to do just what it takes to transform great literature into great film.

In his novel, Bibhutibhusan Banerjee has the children yearning to see a train, but never doing so until Apu boards one while leaving the village. In Ray8217;s trilogy the image of the train makes its own statement: As a young boy Apu sees it from a distance amid a field of kash flowers, but as he grows up and gets married it is there, clanking right beside their modest Calcutta home.

In Teen Kanya, Tagore8217;s Postmaster had to be shorn of all sentimentality. So, apart from introducing some new characters, like the harmless madman who terrifies the postman into trying to read his book upside down, he introduced a restrained ending. The denouement is even more overwhelming in Sunil Ganguly8217;s Pratidwandi. Siddhartha, its protagonist, is 25, educated, intelligent and jobless. He feels trapped between his obligation to support a widowed mother and his inability to find employment deserving of his talents. The archetypal Ray man of conscience, when Siddhartha ultimately decides to accept a medical representative8217;s job in a small dreary town, we learn of it from the images of a bleary landscape seen through the window of a speeding train. As he settles down to shattered illusions we read his letter to Keya in voice-over amid the chanting of a funeral procession and the sound of a birdcall. The screen freezes just as he starts turning to the camera with two words: iti, Siddhartha 8212; the conventional Bengali sign-off in letters.

Even Ganguly, who had Siddhartha kicking and screaming in impotent rage, admits it8217;s one of Ray8217;s most profound endings: 8220;The dead man and the sound of the bird carry a sense of eternal life. It is elevated to another level.8221;

Charulata presented challenges of its own. For, Ray felt Tagore8217;s Nastanirh had an inherent western quality to it, notwithstanding the debar or younger brother-in-law character whose relationship with the sister-in-law is typically rooted to Bengali conventions. If the beginning 8212; remember Charu peeping out of windows with lorgnette in hand 8212; 8220;attempts to use a language entirely free from literary and theatrical influences8221;, the ending too transcends the stark symbolism of Tagore8217;s 8220;let it be8221; through that famous freeze wherein Bhupati tries but is unable to reach Charu8217;s hand.

As a filmmaker, Ray believed in economy of words, was sweeping in his ambition, yet ruthless at the editing table. If historical context is what he needed, he let a narrator do that in Premchand8217;s Shatranj Ke Khilari, while Ghare Baire had to open with chants of Vande Mataram amid a raging fire in the background. As for Ibsen, An Enemy of the People was transposed from the Norway of the 1880s to the Bengal of 1989 and Ganashatru8217;s finale changed to profess that strength lies in the unity of like-minded people rather than Dr Stockmann8217;s conclusion of the strongest man being the one who stands alone. A Master8217;s touch indeed.