Whether in a colonial-era village or contemporary Calcutta, Ray crafted the style of his films to suit the milieu. The natural world and its cycles seem to dictate the path of Pather Panchali, yet by the Calcutta trilogy in the early 70s, Ray experimented with a more chaotic, jarring vision. Through a complex and detailed precision at every level of production, he captured the rich social and physical landscapes of Bengal, with layers of meaning—some of it inscrutable to western viewers, all of it invisibly woven within what then appears on screen as a simply-told tale. “Only if the planning and calculation that go into a scene can be hidden from the audience,” noted Ray, “can the language of a film claim to be successful.”

Emerging from a country newly independent, Ray’s films feature characters who are split or in transition between worlds. While focusing on their individuality and essential humanity, he explores the burdens and contradictions inherent in the expectations of people navigating religion, culture and class status in India’s ever- changing political atmosphere. Apu wavers on the thresholds of city and village, family and independence, education and tradition. He and his sister Durga, Charulata, Arati from The Big City, Siddhartha from The Adversary, and even The Music Room’s decadent zamindar share a rebellious independence and idiosyncratic idealism. Rejecting any mold imposed on them by society—or the film audience—the characters sometimes surprise even themselves with their movement against society’s grain.

Remarkably for the time, the women in Ray’s films not only join their male counterparts in defying convention, but they frequently take center stage. Women may replace men in many of their traditional roles—as breadwinners, rescuers or activators—but more often, they serve as the conscience of the film—as with the forthright Aparna in Days and Nights in the Forest or The Big City’s Arati, who seems to instinctively veer in the direction of equality and justice. Even the prostitute in The Adversary is not judged for her choices. She and Siddhartha’s sister are seen experiencing a freedom and independence taken for granted by men and they radically embrace it. And, it is the fiery spirit within Devi that enters into war with her passive, outer self. The brilliant spark we see in her at the start of the film, once captured, bursts into flames.

Contradictorily, it was through his deep dedication to Bengal that Ray became an international star. Much of his successful crossover to the west acknowledges his films’ powerful, elemental humanity both despite and because of their very specific locations in time, space and culture. “This uniqueness and this universality, and the coexistence of the two,” Ray claimed, “is what I mainly try to convey through my films.” Representing different kinds of human experience with empathy, Ray’s films discover poetry and truth within everyday minutia, the ephemeral, the ineffable and the subtlest movements. Kurosawa commented that Pather Panchali is “the kind of film that flows with the serenity and the nobility of a big river.” This sublime power courses through all of Ray’s films, in varying manifestations, and seems to enter not through the eyes, but the heart. – Brittany Gravely

A continuation of last December’s Apu Trilogy program, this series showcases rare, beautiful and newly acquired 35mm Satyajit Ray prints from the HFA collection.