Satyajit Rays finale statement Shubho Mitra

In the year 1991 Satyajit Ray madeAgantuk(The Stranger) his final film before his death in April 1992. In this film, Ray had made a unique attempt to convey his annoyance about the materialistic quest of modern civilization through his characteristic storytelling style. The film depicts how the protagonist uncle Manomohan Mitras sudden landing into a comfortable milieu of his upper middle class hosts made a panicky effect on them. He was initially suspected as a fraud and later assumed to be a person with a reprehensible objective to fill his empty pockets. The hosts little son Satyaki, Manomohans grandnephew, was the only member of the family who was totally unsuspicious about him from the beginning. The child has not yet been infected by the synthetic worldview of his parents and is yet to become a slave of conventional habits. His keen and innocent observations of his grandfather were the only one which was without any prejudices. Satyaki was also the first to convincingly declare that his grandfather is not a fake but genuine. As the film proceeds, it turns out into a moral analysis ofthe middle class psyche and while doing so, gradually uncovers its terrible status acutely self-centered, devoid of imagination, extremely money driven, always worried about security and hypocriteto thecore. In the final sequence of the film, the benevolent uncle leaves behind a small message of little or no value along with a bank cheque of his substantialinheritance. This subtle act of magnanimity falls like a slap on the face of the hosts reactionary pettybourgeois existence.::In many waysAgantukis a provocative film. Though there is a genuine doubt if at all the middle class can really think today in the way Ray wanted them to think. The basic theme of the film is an intellectual soul searching for a re-discovery of the lost human values. Launching a scathing critique of the reckless immorality of the civilized class and their greed for material possessions, the film candidly focuses on the many vices of our post-modern world. The contradictions of high-rise and rickshaw pullers, NASA and NESHA (drug addiction), technology and organized religion, the phenomenal decay of principles and values, the deep rooted systemic corruption and the death of curiosity are among some of the dark corners that Ray has scornfully declared inAgantukas symbols of civilization. How can a person's identity be proved through a passport in a fraudulent world? Who is civilized and who is savage? A civilized person in contrast to a barbaric cannibal is defined as the person who can wipe out an entire population with lethal weapon by just pressing a button. Class, caste and religion, values and prejudices, politics and power really have no place in the concrete humanity and morality that Ray has articulated throughout the film. Through his quest and vast experience of life Manomohan has recognized the universal brotherhood of humanity which is beyond any country, language, cast or religion and free of any form of identity crisis. Rays own beliefs become clear when he speaks through Manomohan that, I do not believe anything that divides people religion does it, and organized religion does it certainly. For the same reason I do not believe in caste According to him, technological achievements may well become counter-productive and provoke blatant greed. Modern civilization boasts on the achievements of science but forgets that it was the Neolithic age when humans had already made most of the indispensable inventions crucial for their survival.::Agantukhas two discern layers. The upper layer of the film deals with the problems of the urban middle class morals. This layer is relatively easy to recognize while viewing the film. In this layer Ray is mercilessly probing the harmful effects of money, the artificiality of values, the idiocy of war, the emptiness of an acquisitive worldview and the absurdity of identity. But there is also another subtle but deeper layer that exists side by side with the upper which isapparentlybeing overlookedby most. It deals with a much wider gamut of issues, inciting the viewer to position him/her in front of the history of human race to re-discover the natural Man in relation to his social state.Honestly speaking, the anthropological aspects of the film were not Rays own. He had often spoken about howAgantukwas inspired by the thinking of the French anthropologist Claude Lvi-Strauss. In his works Lvi-Strauss had firmly stressed that the mind and intelligence of the primitive savage people were certainly not inferior to the civilized. The universe of the primitives and the civilized is different due to the approach in which primitive and civilized people conceptualized their world. The savage mind, according to Lvi-Strauss, is equally logical in the same sense and the same fashion as the civilized minds and therefore no negative value could be attributed to it. To understand a different type of social system one needs to be tolerant, reflective and curious. Sadly, the mechanistic civilization by and large has lost these qualities.Lvi-Strauss has asserted that, Certain social groups must be adjudged superior to ourselves, if the comparison rests upon their success in reaching objectives comparable to our own The phenomenal evolution of human beings from anthropoid apes to modern man is the greatest evidence of this success. Certain civilizations of the past knew quite well how best to solve the same problems which the modern civilized society is still struggling to solve today. If one can diversify the field of investigation into different societies, it will eventually become plain that no human society is fundamentally good: but neither is any of them fundamentally bad; all offer their members certain advantages Cannibalism is considered to be the most horrible, disgusting and uncivilized of all savage practices. But according to Lvi-Strauss, no society is proof, morally speaking, against the demands of hunger. In times of starvation men will eat literally anything, as we lately saw in the Nazi extermination camps. By looking from outside one could be easily tempted to distinguish two opposing types of society. But once one had lived as they live, and eaten as they eat, one well knew what hunger could be, and how the satisfaction of that hunger brought not merely repletion, but happiness itself. Every form of society thus has its own impurity within itself that finds outlet in elements of injustice, cruelty, and insensitivity. Societies which seem to be brutal may turn out, to be reasonably humane and benevolent when examined from another point of view. By nature, no society is perfect. Claiming one form of society as superior in its relation to all the others is nothing but a result of shameful ignorance. InAgantuk, the representation of theAltamira Bisonconvincingly explains this point.::In a most bizarre way, the honest provocation generated by Ray in the film had stirred some of his honourable detractors. He had been criticized as an armchair liberal functioning as a simple humanist who is placing his hopes and disillusionment on some grass-root cultural activity and on the innocence of children. Is he not oversimplifying social reality by viewing it as an individual vs. society conflict, they had argued. These are the same stupid arguments that had earlier tried to accuse Rays seminal workPather Panchali for romanticizing Indias poverty for foreign consumption. Sometime its best to ignore them than going into a counter-argument. Ray did not profess for the primitive form of society which some of his critics thought he did. He has simply chosen a middle path where Shakespeare, Tagore, Marx and Freud can equally contribute along with the experience and values of primitive ancestors. While he has harshly criticized the war mentality of the civilized world, similarly he has disapproved the tribal custom of polygamy. His intention was to raise relevant issues from a certain perspective which can stir his audience to look differently. As a genuine artist, Ray did not intend to show the solution but tried to guide the audience to find one.Agantukassists to shift the focus of the civilized world towards re-evaluating its root.Similarly, Ray has definitely not spoken about any individual vs. society conflict in the film. He got the fundamental idea from Lvi-Strauss to put up incisive interrogations on society and culture as a whole. Is it possible to take an unbiased view of customs and ways of life distant from ones own? Is it possible to doubt the rightness or naturalness of the customs of the civilized society instead of taking it for granted? Is it possible to find a middle way between the primitive and modern values? How to find progressive elements from ancient societies and make use of them that will help the civilized world to reform its own customs? How to gather experiences from a remote culture and get enriched by them? Is it possible to unravel which aspects of the existing nature of Man is original, and which is artificial? Is it possible to re-discover the natural Man in his relation to the social state he belongs to? Even if we want to believe, how do we prove that ancient societies were inferior to our own?The level of depth inscribed in the oeuvre of Satyajit Rays films is unique. In the age of the Hollywood blockbustersand the banality surrounding an overcooked myth of Bollywoods theory of culture, it is worth talking about Ray and his phenomenal artistic mastery.::