Satyajit Ray's Films Deal With The Follies Of Humans'

In an exclusive chat after the screening of Satyajit Ray's Aranyer Din Ratri at the Cannes Film Festival this year, actor Sharmila Tagore opens up about working in the classic, the timelessness of Ray, and what amuses her about film festivals of today

- NAMRATA JOSHI

Sharmila Tagore, Satyajit Ray's cinema is all about lasting power. Something known, acknowledged and celebrated, time and again, and underscored once more at the recent screening of the restored version of his 1970 film Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest) at the Cannes Film Festival in its Cannes Classics segment. "Ray and his creations have lived on. They still speak to the viewers and feel contemporary," says Tagore, two days after the screening, on her return to India from a very rushed trip to the French Riviera.

Tagore had presented the film along with her co-actor Simi Garewal in the presence of the renowned American filmmaker Wes Anderson, among others. Anderson participated in and has supported the film's 4K restoration by The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project at L'Immagine Ritrovata, together with Shivendra Singh Dungar.

Apur Sansar's romance is eternal. It still excites and thrills in its simplicity and touches a chord," she says.

Describing Aranyer Din Ratri as the story of a playful encounter between four young men and three young women, the Cannes writeup on the film called it free-spirited and radiant in its appeal. Based on Sunil Gangopadhyay's novel of the same name, Ray turns it into a portrait of the bourgeoisie Indian youth of the times and a peep into the class, gender and urban-rural dynamics, differences and divides.

Tagore calls the four male protagonists of Aranyer Din Ratri, "victims of cultural imperialism." "The four boys [Asim played by Soumitra Chatterjee, Subhendu Chatterjee as Sanjoy, Samit Bhanja as Hari and Rabi Ghosh as Sekhar] go for a vacation [to Palamu] to get away from it all... They are too caught up. Without the trope of Western cinema, they can't appreciate nature. They don't have the words to explain it. They are out of place in nature, amid the grace of the local santhal tribal people," says Tagore.