In hindsight, a day of special events a few weeks ago at the Satyajit Ray Film and Study Center at  UC Santa Cruz  (http://satyajitray.ucsc.edu/index.html) could be seen as a prequel to two new Indian exhibitions in San Francisco: “Maharaja” at the Asian Art Museum and “Contemporary Art of India” at the Yerba Buena Center.

On Saturday September 24, Ray’s last film “Agantuk” was introduced and screened, and was followed by a talk and question and answer session by the most distinguished Dr. Karan Singh.

The Ray Film and Study Center at UCSC is one of the most important places for the study and preservation of the legendary Indian film director’s work. Established in 1991, it has a treasure trove of his original stories, screenplays, scores, illustrations, storyboards, and books as well as films. It has been instrumental in the preservation of his negatives as well as the dissemination of his movies.  Ray, as he himself said, achieved early maturity. His first film “Pather Panchali” in 1955 established him worldwide as one of a handful of the most significant film directors. Many critics consider him the premier director of the 2nd half of the 20th century.

Ray, above, and stills from “Pather Panchali”:

Dr. Singh, whose father was the last Maharaja of Kashmir and who himself was its governor, served in the cabinet of Indira Gandhi. He was the Indian ambassador to the United States, and is currently the president of the Indian Council of Cultural Relations among other positions. Dr. Singh possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of Indian culture, and he challenged the audience with a look at the basic concepts of the Upanishads. He feels they are directly relevant to the unsettled state of the world today. For him, religious or philosophical literature that isn’t applicable to current affairs are archival documents, not living texts. He won over the audience with his combination of erudition, ethical commitment, humor and good will.

      

“Agantuk” was shot mostly indoors and consists chiefly of conversation. It is not a film of great ambition in one sense, but in another, with a light and sometimes humorous touch, it raises issues crucial to Ray. Though the film title is officially translated in English as “The Stranger,” “Agantuk” we learned really means “one who turns up.”  We are in familiar film territory here. Think “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” with Nick Nolte as the outsider, upsetting and reordering Richard Dreyfus and Bette Midler’s life.

That 1986 movie was a remake of a film familiar to Ray, Jean Renoir’s “Boudu Saved From Drowning.”

Ray also knew Pasolini’s “Theorem” in which Terence Stamp is the visitor who undermines a family’s precarious order.

Among other parallel stories, we could even include “The Music Man,” as extrovert as “Agantuk” is personal, where an itinerant band leader turns River City, Iowa upside down. “Agantuk” is also inspired by Lèvi-Strauss’s anthropological work, particularly the argument that both the “savage” and “civilized” minds are imbued with universal human characteristics and not totally different in kind.

Our “Anantuk” is a long lost uncle – or is he? –  of the wife in a modern family. He has sent a letter requesting permission for an extended visit.  This is out of the blue; he severed contact with his entire family years before. Inspired in his youth by a picture of an ancient cave painting, he says he has spent his life studying primitive cultures, staying with tribal groups all over the world.  From the external evidence – passport, family knowledge, his appearance – there is really no way to know whether he is truly her uncle, or a fake. The story unfolds.

It is typical of Ray that his thoroughly Indian movie has many points of contact with Western art and ideas. Well educated, he was steeped in English literature, liberal Enlightenment values, and European classical music. He was profoundly influenced by Bengali transcultural Rabindranath Tagore. While he is considered a cultural treasure of India, Ray’s Special Oscar acceptance speech (www.youtube.com/watch?v=RebyMdMhshU) nevertheless reminds us that he wrote fan letters to Deanna Durbin, Ginger Rogers and Billy Wilder. Ray loved Hollywood movies growing up, and of course knew everything going on in the films of his contemporaries Bergman, Fellini and Truffaut. Seeing “The Bicycle Thief” by de Sica confirmed his desire to become a film maker. And yet. It is the combination of the reserve of western “classical” film techniques and a remarkable access to the emotional life that make Ray’s films unforgettable to so many.  While he comes in close to his characters with unusual empathy, his camera’s gaze also preserves the distance of respect that can sometimes border on reverence.

In the opening moments of “Agantuk,” a weary traveler’s single stockinged foot, shoe removed, rests on the floor of a train car. Looking at this traveler as if seated opposite him, we can’t see his face; it’s hidden behind a steadily scrutinized newspaper. The paper rocks back and forth with the monotonous movement of the train, a metronome keeping time during the endless hours of rail travel. Clues and questions.  Soon, in a brief flashback, after the host family considers the uncle’s letter, we see the mother cutting cookie dough in the kitchen, an image so sensuous and tactile, it takes us into a world of childhood, essential to our understanding the young son’s take on this new visitor.

Along with these and other penetrating images, there are passages of chit chat and conversation, the sometimes mundane exchanges with numerous characters about ancient and modern values, about whether this visitor is real or an impostor. You can’t get to the lingering power of the images at the end of “Agantuk” without taking in the whole story. Ray’s movies aren’t dramatic like theater, highlighting contrasts and sudden reverses, but dramatic like stories. They track unfolding events, and their emotional revelations punctuate the narrative’s natural pace.  Passages of “Agantuk” may even seem tedious to some. But then, at the end of the movie, perhaps several seconds of film, jump cuts, could change your life.

Ray said “It has been my preoccupation to achieve as much density as possible within a superficially simple narrative structure. I am thinking of my own audience in Bengal… At the beginning, this audience was extremely unsophisticated.” Kurosawa said, “Without the least effort and without any sudden jerks, Ray paints his picture, but its effect on the audience is to stir up deep passions. How does he achieve this?”

In Ray’s movies, everything is deliberate, but not noticeably so.  He would sketch each shot of his storyboard himself.

He often wrote both the original material as well as the screenplay, often the score; he created the sets and costumes.  Deliberate but not self-conscious, he is an “invisible auteur.” Disarmed by the apparent lack of a storyteller, the audience absorbs his images.

In this and other of films by Ray there are moments when time seems to hesitate, you hold your eyes open, not wanting to interrupt the flow of onscreen images by blinking. A movie is naturally a frame around some part of the world, but at times, Ray seems to throw open a window directly on defining moments of human experience.

In contrast to my own American culture which sometimes has to work hard to remember anything earlier than high school (sorry Hollywood, I couldn’t resist that cheap shot!), India may have the longest cultural memory of all. The plaintive strain in Indian classical music, like the voice of a soul reluctantly taking leave of the Boundless to journey through this harsh vale of tears, evokes a distant past older than the Garden of Eden, or the Jade Emperor. “Aguntuk” is about the healing power of joining modern to ancient experience, and about the falsity of the fairy tale we tell ourselves, and become duly frightened by, that civilization and modern life have cut us off from our humanity.  Mr. Singh’s message was about finding the living truth in old wisdom, about the spiritual foundation of ethical behavior. Given the continuity of culture, the message at UC Santa Cruz  on Saturday was that we are not stranded here on our own, in our island of time.

As I understood it, the Satyajit Ray Film and Study Center in Santa Cruz is no longer supported financially by the UC system, and is seeking an endowment. It’s a great cultural resource.

Here is a view from the UCSC campus, and an additional photo of the director.