My Favorite Satyajit Ray Film

Movies that want to make social statements can very easily be tedious affairs, especially if they are specific to an unfamiliar culture. It can be difficult to grasp all the little nuances of how a different society works, the historical context, and other information that can be vital in penetrating the narrative. That's why the greatest directors are often the ones who can tell very culturally specific stories in very universal terms. India's greatest director, without question, is the Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray, who made many, many films about life in India, but in such a way that you hardly need to know a thing about India to appreciate them.

Ray's best known films are the ones that make up his famous "Apu trilogy," which follow the ups and downs of the dramatic life of their title character from boyhood to adulthood. The story is very simple and easy to grasp. Apu's family is loving, but poor. The parents must make sacrifices to provide for their children. You could transplant the bare skeleton of the narrative into a dozen other cultures, and it would still work. I'm not sure you could say quite the same about my favorite Satyajit Ray film, "Mahanagar," or "The Big City." It presents the audience with a universal problem and characters in a way that's very easy to understand, but also reflects a very particular time and place and mood in Indian history.

Bank clerk Subrata Mazumdar (Anil Chatterjee) is having trouble supporting his family on a single income, and looks for an additional part-time job. His wife Arati (Madhabi Mukherjee) decides that she will also take a job to help out, though women working outside the home was still a relative rarity at the time. Her traditional father-in-law Priyogopal (Haren Chatterjee), a former schoolteacher, is entirely against the idea, but Arati prevails. She wins a sales position at a sewing machine company, and is soon bringing home enough money to make a real difference to the family. However, her success has other consequences that she did not foresee, and the family continues to struggle with her decision.

"The Big City" was Satyajit Ray's first contemporary film, and is quite pointed in its commentary on changing gender roles, class, race, and generational differences. However, it is also remarkably gentle and even-handed with all its characters, showing everyone's point of view and the validity of their concerns. While Subrata and Arati stay at the forefront of the film, as we might expect, a major subplot is devoted to Priyogopal, who decides to go visit his most successful students for financial help, but these visits end up shattering many of his illusions about himself. Arati learns to value her job and all the opportunities that it brings her, but what to do when her child misses her? Or falls sick?

I appreciate the film's commitment to realism, the way that nearly every development comes up organically and is handled with great care. One of my favorite scenes is one where Subrata spots Arati in a cafe one day with another man. He hides himself nearby to listen in on their conversation, and years of bad Hollywood comedies had me expecting some misleading exchange that would create a terrible misunderstanding. Instead, the other man is a customer who Arati briskly conducts business with, and when he asks after her husband, she lies to make Subrata seem more important, downplaying her own job. Subrata, chastened, never mentions the conversation to his wife.

Ray's point of view is remarkably progressive, and the matter-of-factness with which he portrays Arati's transformation from housewife to working woman completely floored me the first time I saw it. She's easily one of the best Ray characters, who grows from a timid figure, initially very unsure about the tasks her job requires of her, to a self-confident, and even bold woman who makes the hardest moral decision at the end of the film without hesitation. And the film would not have worked without focusing so much of the narrative on Subrata, who is initially encouraging of his wife's desire to work, then doubtful, and ultimately comes to terms with her new status on his own.

I find myself often comparing Satyajit Ray's films to Yasujiro Ozu's. Their filmmaking styles are quite different, but their subject matter and their approaches to that subject matter are often similar. Both made many films about ordinary life, about typical middle-class and lower-class families undergoing changing times and momentous events. Ray's films were darker, sometimes tragic and upsetting. The later ones became more cynical in their worldview. However, like Ozu's films, they remained remarkable in their ability to reflect real life and demystify an unfamiliar country. I suspect no one has ever done more to make Indian culture and society seem more wonderfully ordinary and familiar to the world than Satyajit Ray.
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What I've Seen - Satyajit Ray

Pather Panchali (1955)
Aparajito (1956)
The Music Room (1958)
The World of Apu (1959)
Devi (1960)
Charulata (1964)
Nayak (1966)
The Big City (1968)
Days and Nights in the Forest (1970)
Distant Thunder (1973)
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