Page 189 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

176 The Apu Trilogy

As for the Bengali audience, the cosmopolitanism for which
Bengal was once famous has been largely replaced by that
parochialism of outlook – the kupamanduk (‘frog in the well’)
tendency passingly referred to in Aparajito and lambasted in
The Stranger. ‘We may live in a remote corner of Bengal,’ the
headmaster tells the teenage Apu, ‘but that does not mean
our outlook should be narrow.’ ‘Don’t you have any ambition?’
a college friend asks Apu in Calcutta. ‘You’ll just go on liv-
ing here like the frog in the well? You won’t go abroad even
if you have the chance?’ The best of the current Bengali film-
makers, notably Gautam Ghosh, Rituparno Ghosh and Aparna
Sen, take serious note of Ray’s films; but most Bengalis, frankly
speaking, are not serious about them – so much so that there
was negligible Calcutta press coverage of the first ever com-
plete retrospective of Ray’s films, shown at the National Film
Theatre in London in 2002; an indifference unthinkable when
Ray was in mid-career.
In my view, there is a definite risk that Ray’s work, except for
the Apu Trilogy, will become trapped in a cultural eddy by the
very breadth and uniqueness of its creator’s range of eastern and
western references: neither in the mainstream of world cinema
like Kurosawa’s films, nor in the Bengali backwaters like his
contemporary Ritwik Ghatak’s.
I hope not. Speaking for myself, I know I shall continue to
revisit Ray’s films as I do favourite novels, paintings and music.
Especially the Apu Trilogy, The Music Room, The Goddess, The
Postmaster, Charulata, The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha, Days
and Nights in the Forest, The Adversary, The Chess Players, Pikoo,
Branches of the Tree and The Stranger. Almost half of his total
work as a film-maker. What more can one ask from a creative
genius?

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