My father kept politics in the background in his movies, says Sandip Ray

The second wave of the pandemic robbed film buffs of the chance to celebrate the birth centenary of Satyajit Ray. This year, however, people from all walks of life are flocking to 1/1 Bishop Lefroy Road, Kolkata—Ray’s home for the last two decades of his life—to pay homage to the maestro. Ray’s son, Sandip, who is also a famous director, stays here now. In an exclusive interview with THE WEEK, Sandip opens up about his father and explains the attempts being made to preserve and protect his legacy.

Edited excerpts:

Q/ Do you remember the making of Pather Panchali?

A/ I was quite young when Pather Panchali was filmed. But I have heard several stories from my father, enough to fill a book. He thought he would never finish the movie. It took him three years to complete it.

Q/ Your father became a filmmaker despite not having a theatre background.

A/ He was an advertisement executive. He got exposed to European and Hollywood films after his company sent him abroad. He became a foreign film buff and saw at least 90 films before making Pather Panchali.

Q/ The movie was a milestone in Indian cinema. What about his films after that?

A/ His second film, Aparajito, was hugely appreciated and won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival. But it somehow did not do well at the box office. Apur Sansar, too, met with the same fate. But he came back with Parash Pathar and Jalsaghar.

Q/ Was Ray very economical while making films?

A/ He was very economical and methodical. His homework was phenomenal. So he took much less time for shooting. He hardly wasted time discussing things like camera positions. He was an expert in getting things done quickly. He never formally learned filmmaking. People were surprised how he mastered the art of filmmaking quickly and that, too, at the international level.

Q/ Ray made art films, but he was successful commercially as well.

A/ He always wanted to make films for the people of Kolkata. It was sheer coincidence that his movies broke all barriers. Music was a key priority for him. Jalsaghar, for instance, was a musical story even though it had a deep sense of social message and great story-telling. Something interesting happened while he was filming Jalsaghar, with Chabi Biswas as the lead actor. It was his first movie after the Apu trilogy and he felt it was shaping up as a sombre Hindustani musical. During that time, Tapan Sinha’s Kabuliwala won a prize at the Berlin film festival. Biswas, who played the hero in Kabuliwala, told my father that he would be gone for a while. My father let him go, put Jalsaghar on hold and made a quickie called Parash Pathar. It was a terrific satire which won the hearts of the people of Kolkata and also attracted movie buffs abroad.

Q/ Was your family comfortable when Ray switched from the advertisement field to movies?

A/ When he left the advertisement world, there was tension in our family. My grandmother was disappointed because he used to draw a good salary then. But when my father became famous, everything changed and money became secondary.

Q/ Mrinal Sen made Bhuvan Shome in 1969 when Kolkata was in turmoil. The youth of the city demanded new ideas. Was Ray unnerved?

A/ Yes, a bit. He then decided to do Kolkata-centric stories. He was fascinated by people living in Kolkata. He used to say he could not be creative without being in Kolkata. He seldom attended seminars. But when it came to films, he always preferred good stories. He would not take up any cause just for the sake of doing films about Kolkata. There was a complaint against him that he kept away from politics in his films. But he proved his critics wrong with four films.

Q/ Wasn’t he a left liberal?

A/ Yes. But he never emphasised that through his movies. Look at Heerak Rajar Deshe, which is purely a political story, but wrapped in a fairytale. Had it been told in a normal manner, the censors would not have cleared it. In his movies, he preferred politics to be in the background. A story was needed upfront because he wanted his movies to be timeless. If you watch his movies carefully, you will realise that he never followed any particular trend. He adopted a neutral stance so that even after ten years it could be seen with a new vision.

Q/ How was his relation with Ritwik Ghatak? It was rumoured that there was some kind of rivalry.

A/ Not at all. That is just gossip. He admired and respected Ritwik da a lot. He liked many of his films. Ritwik da used to come to our house.

Q/ What was Ray’s view about mainstream movies?

A/ He was fond of mainstream cinema. We used to watch Tapan Sinha’s films together. Ajay Kar, Asit Sen and Tarun Majumder were icons and great storytellers. He used to see their films and there was mutual critical judgement. Unfortunately that is missing today.

Q/ Bengali films are now made with ideas taken from Tamil and Telugu flicks.

A/ Yes, it is a serious issue. They made money, but in the long-term it proved to be disastrous. Now things are changing a bit.

Q/ Ray himself was worried about the declining standards of Bengali literature and the impact it had on films.

A/ He used to say that he could not find a story even after reading six or seven pages of a book. It would not be possible in films. You can beat around the bush for ten minutes. But from the 11th minute onwards, you need to start telling your story. That was the problem faced by Bengali literature, which my father felt was no longer fit enough to make films on. He was very vocal about contemporary writing.

Q/ What are your plans to protect your father’s films?

A/ The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has given us hope. When the Academy honoured my father with an Oscar for lifetime contribution, it found it hard to source relevant audio-visual clips. Now the Academy is planning to preserve all his movies. The process for preserving the paper heritage has begun. Our weather damages papers, so we are trying to preserve those. His body of work is huge, which will take years to preserve. It was only after his death that we got to know about the volume of his work. He never wanted to be disturbed when he was alive. Now the Victoria and Albert Museum in London has come forward to help us preserve everything. We are also planning to set up a film and study centre in his name.