Indian Film Culture - 16.cdr - federation of film societies of india

fabric of such inelegant reality. It is strenuously
woven, and the clear-cut characters in the office
situation carry no suggestion of unseen depths.
Here the powerful simplifications of Ray's
earlier films lend towards over-simplification.
In other words, he fails to enter the post-Tagore
world, in which the young idealist has turned
cynical, or has turned away from patriotism,
politics and social reform because all this proves
too dirty for him and makes him take refuge in
the 'poetry of anguish'. It is a moot question
whether the later generation brought up on
Tagore in the pre-independence era of hope was
toughened enough in its training to cope with the
pressures of disillusion, greed, corruption and
ruthlessness released in the post-independence
era. Even the rural scene today has changed, and
the typology of the past no longer fits. The
image of village life conjured up for so long by
literary habits has at last become untrue. New
types are being created by the incursion planned
investment into the countryside, the invasion of
the radio, the Block Development offices,
family planning drives, the commercial cinema,
the money generated by soaring food prices, the
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opening up of communications. The old myths
are no longer adequate: they provide a rich
background to the middle-class mind, but the
need to translate these values into a tougher
outlook and languages has become painfully
clear.
The post-Tagore age has finally caught up with
us. It is an age that might call for a passionate
involvement on the part of the artist, and the film
is an art which, willy-nilly, must in some way
reflect these changes in social reality. Whether
Ray will enter into another phase of
development to do so, or new artists will arise
out of these new and less serene urges of the
times, it is impossible to say. Or will the most
significant expression of intellect and
sensibility–which in the years of Ray in Bengal
has been the domain of the cinema-move to
another medium? In his documentary biography
about Tagore, Ray does for the man what his
films as a whole do for the Tagore age: accept a
value- world created by another, and proceed to
illuminate it brilliantly, to project and extend it
in terms of the cinema.
June 2012
Indian Film Culture