/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM-INDIA: Sequel Recreates Celluloid Magic

By Sujoy Dhar Reprint | | Print |

Sujoy Dhar

KOLKATA, India, Feb 25 2003 (IPS) - Those mesmerised by the 1969 classic by the late, celebrated Bengali filmmaker Satyajjit Ray, ‘Aranyer Din Ratri’ (Days and Nights in the Forest), can look forward to a fitting sequel complete with some of the main cast of actors – now older by 33 years.

Ray, the only Indian to win a lifetime Oscar award and recipient of the French Legion d’Honneur for outstanding contribution to cinema, is not easy to emulate. But Gautam Ghose, who has taken up the challenge in the sequel called ‘Abar Aranya’ (Again in the Forest), is no ordinary filmmaker either.

Ghose has already gained a fairly formidable international reputation through a slew of meaningful screen titles. But Ray’s is a hard act to follow, not least through a sequel to one of the maestro’s finest pieces.

”Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun and the moon,” the great Japanese director A Kurosawa once said of the Kolkata-born filmmaker, who died in 1992.

Ray’s original film was about four young friends making a holiday excursion to a forest in eastern Bihar state’s Palamu district. They wanted to break free of the shackles of civilisation and rejoice in the abundance of nature.

There, one seduces a local tribal belle while the others court two sisters vacationing with their family in a nearby cottage. A subtle psychological drama laced with sexual undertones unfolds against the backdrop of primal forests

As the days and nights pass – filled with the idle pleasures of a native dance, a silly word game, a village fair – the film becomes metaphorical for the tussle between tradition and modernity, as well as desire and reticence becoming increasingly complex in its moral and psychological implications.

”The delicate effect of balance and counterpoint can be seen again and again in this film,” wrote ‘The Sunday Observer’ in a recent reappraisal of the Ray classic.

Actors Soumitra Chatterjee (Ashim), Sharmila Tagore (Aparna), Subhendu Chatterjee (Sanjoy) and Samit Bhanja (Hari), the stars of ‘Aranyer Din Ratri’ feature once again, 33 years older, in Gautam Ghose’s film ‘Abar Aranye’ .

Adding colour is a whole group of post-Ray artistes representing the new relations in the lives of the older cast, including Bollywood star Tabu as the distraught daughter of Soumitra and Sharmila besides other ‘Generation-X’ artistes like Rupa Ganguly, Sashwata Chatterjee and Bengali film industry’s current heartthrob Jishu Sengupta.

In the sequel, Ashim has shed his Communist leanings to become a tea company honcho with two children from Aparna. In the Ray film, Ashim had met his cerebral match in the charming and confident Aparna and there was already a hint of a future relationship .

Then a writer waiting in the wings, sensitive and soft-hearted Sanjoy (Subhendu Chatterjee) is now a name in the literary field but he is a father and father-in-law too.

Shown in the Ray film as jilted and desperate for sexual encounters with tribal belle Duli (Hindi film actress Simi Garewal), lustful Hari (Samit Bhanja) has aged too. In the sequel he has a wife (Rupa Ganguly) much younger in age.

But Ghose shows the couple as childless and Hari, once brimming with physical vigour and sportsmanship, suffering form various maladies.

The comically earnest character Sekhar, played in the Ray film by ace Bengali comedian Robi Ghosh, has been shown dead in the sequel, a necessary device since the actor has passed away.

It helped that the band of 1969 remained in touch and readily responded once again to the call of the wild although in an altogether different forest, the Dooars tract of northern Bengal. Ghose said the whole idea struck him while researching for a documentary on Satyajit Ray some years back.

"I am not comfortable with the word ‘sequel’. This is actually a take-off from where Manikda (Ray) had left," says Ghose.

"For long I wanted to make a film on a journey. A journey which is very unpredictable in nature, of unforeseen incidents. So during the making of this Ray documentary and in the course of dealing with Manikda’s (Ray’s) works, I discovered that time can be a metaphor for the impermanence of the worldly phenomenon.”

Ghose decided to make that journey with the survivors and a new generation. When he told the Ray family of his plans for the sequel, ”They were excited. So were the old actors and actresses for whom the film’s experience is pure nostalgia," says Ghose.

Gushes actress Sharmila Tagore in approval, "I was overwhelmed when Gautam approached me. Nostalgia swept through my mind. I was looking forward to some lively chat sessions with my contemporaries and that is what we did during the shooting."

‘Abar Aranya’ is nearing completion and all set to hit the screen next year, when discerning cinema goers will decide whether Ghose has made the Ray grade or not