February 18, 2000, Review of “The Stranger” by Satyajit Ray
18 February 2000, 4:30 a.m.
Dear Andrew:
Thanks for loaning me “The Stranger.” There’s a lot to like about this film, but it’s also not surprising that my film encyclopedias have almost nothing to say about it and only give it 2 1/2 stars (approximately a C+). For someone like me who’s only seen the trilogy (“Pather Panchali,” “Aparajito,” and “World of Apu”), it was quite a shock–where’s the quaint primal black and white poetic beauty I was expecting? The dreaminess? The mythic suspension of time? The grace and subtlety? The love and warmth for his characters?
Well, Ray’s grown-up, for one thing, in late 20th century India. He’s not retired to an idyllic countryside, dreaming of the past, deaf to the future, like the lawyer. There’s a part of everyone, I think, that wanted Ray to remain an “ethnic filmmaker.” I remember Diane di Prima talking about how Franz Kline couldn’t give away the color sketches he made of the Southamptons late in his career because everyone was collecting “typical” Kline black and white broadstreak paintings. The bright colors and modern urban environment of “The Stranger” were literally shocking to me, and the mixture of English and Bengali was extremely disturbing and disconcerting. But I think that’s exactly the point here, as is made clear as the film progresses. The child goes to bed with a Tintin book (in English, although it was originally written in French, of course), the wife with an Agatha Christie novel (another writer with a identity issue), and the husband with an English language magazine. When Manmohan wants something to drink, they bring him a Coke. A statue of the Virgin Mary is over the wife when she lies down in bed instead of the Shiva and Kali statues which they display with their other antiques. The husband (and all of the men except Manmohan) dresses in modern western clothes and idealizes and dreams and believes in the supremacy of science and technology and the present, while the wife dresses in traditional garb and believes in her intuition.
And into their world comes Manmohan, who alone knows all the old songs and can sing the 108 names of Krishna, who has left Calcutta’s provincialism only to discover that it has led him back to the “savages.” Ray isn’t very subtle about what he’s trying to say (which I admire, actually), and the dance sequence near the end makes it clear. Manmohan “arranges” for a dance–the father watches with fond but distant curiosity at its quaintness (there’s no way back for him, but he’s a nice guy after all), while the wife begins to move with the music and eventually joins the dancers (leave it to the women to join arms and easily and believingly link the past with the present), and the great uncle watches with his arm around the boy, content with opening the world for the next generation in the hope of preserving it.
In one speech Manmohan talks about the mixture in Calcutta of highrises and rickshaws, claiming somewhat sarcastically that this is the mark of “civilization,” and in a way he’s also describing his own film. And all of the talk about caste–surely he’s not unaware of the wraithlike appearance of the darkskinned servants in the film, or the subservience of the wife and child to the husband’s imperiousness–”Get me the phonebook, woman” indeed.
My one real insight into the film is that I’m almost positive that Ray was very conscious of Shakespeare’s last play, “The Tempest,” in making this film because their concerns at the end of their careers are very much the same (much like the concerns of “Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams”)–i.e., what’s the proper place of imagination, the creative, and the artist in reference to tradition AND life as it’s actually lived; what’s the proper element of respect for what has been, knowing full well that it must pass away in order for the new to be born; what is the proper balance between “trashing” and having inordinate respect for the past AND the new; and in both of their beliefs that in love it’s possible to survive or at least to bear our grief at life’s passing (although significantly, in this very Indian film, it’s not eros but rather philia, or proper filial respect, which is given highest reverence).
Like “The Stranger,” “The Tempest” portrays a man who has lost his rightful place in his family (as well as a sizable inheritance from his father, from whom he’s estranged), and is “stranded” in penury among savages; whose proper identity and heritage are in question (whilst being surrounded by people whose real identities are actually masked and who project all of their own greed and suspicion onto him); who has learned “magic” (which in both cases, it turns out, is more like subservience to natural law); and who gives away his inheritance to his “daughter,” which is how Manmohan addresses his niece in the end. Both of the main characters leave the “stage” at the end of the story, choosing an island where they will repair from “civilization” to live alone among the savages. And like “The Tempest,” there is the central “primitive” form of the filmmaker’s art echoed here in the tribal dance, which in “The Tempest” takes place as a traditional masque concerning agricultural mythology. And both Shakespeare and Ray break up their plays for loving tributes of traditional ethnic song and dance; and both stories are described as comedies, although neither of them are very funny to me.
My main complaint about the film is that Ray glorifies the “stranger”–I’m at a point in my life where I fail to see the “transcendence” of someone who takes such pride in his own “transcendence”–how someone who can have so much sympathy for tribal societies can have so little for his own “tribe”–causing them difficulties and pain by arriving out of the blue and disappearing without a proper goodbye. THEY have to make all the efforts to heal the pain–they reconcile with him, not he to them. Being a 21st century American, I can see the transitional moment in time for Calcutta portrayed in “The Stranger” to be just as much of a troubled (but still very tribal) one as the scene where Manmohan calls out for the girl to go and fetch him a cot for his guests (or the bits about touching the feet and proper smoking etiquette or how women must wait for the men to finish eating before they can), but I doubt that Ray (and certainly not Manmohan) can. Ray somewhat undercuts this by his reference to the Prodigal Son–that Manmohan does not return to his family as either a profligate or as someone humbled–but the self-pride that drips off of Manmohan at that moment is not very flattering, and I think that Ray believes it is. That’s where I think this film ultimately fails to convince–I would have liked to have seen more humility in him. Maybe when I make it to my seventies I’ll be able to be proud again–but right now it seems to me that each member of the family actually grows more than Manmohan through their interaction. And although Ray may think that’s a positive statement on Manmohan’s wisdom, I think that’s Manmohan’s loss.
Anyway, thanks so much for letting me see this. There’s plenty to think and talk about here. I’m glad I got a chance to see it.
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