Rubbing an Itch

I’ve said it once. And twice. Now I must say it again: there is a better way of dealing with the universal, one that goes beyond simple homilies to show what a genius like Satyajit Ray can uncover in the human experience. Penelope Houston, a brilliant film critic, writes of such a quality in Ray’s Mahanagar.

Ray has an unmatched feeling for the moments when a situation catches people unawares and minds perceptibly expand or contract when confronted with some infinitesimal stress.  Mahanagar is particularly rich in these glimpses into minds at sea. (BFI Notes.)

It is precisely this uncertainty that the film describes, and seems to be about; the last scene of reconciliation full of doubts, unexpected ideas and resolutions. Arati thinks Subrata is angry; yet he is soliloquising about the essential weakness of an employee’s character; and then…together they confidently walk through the streets of Calcutta towards an unknown future. Change is unpredictable; the city a complex story, whose ending is a mystery.

Houston and Andrew Robinson are rare critics. Houston has the intuition of a first class novelist; Robinson knows his stuff, writing biographies not just on Satyajit Ray but on a major Ray influence, Rabindranath Tagore. Others, more typical of the critical genre, show far less insight. Tom Milne is ‘enchanted’ by the film. David Wilson sees Mahanagar as… 

…a microcosm of India today, the 20^th century inexorably imposing itself on a way of life still steeped in the taboos for tradition.  (BFI Notes)

Acquarello has similar thoughts:

Mahanagar is deceptively lyrical, yet profoundly insightful examination of modern society: the obsolescence of cultural tradition, the financial instability of an emerging economy, the changing role of women.  (BFI Notes)

Not wrong, but too abstract; these critics skimming the surface of this film; unlike Houston who dives deep, to swim through its undercurrents. Enough, really, for a critic to note that Mahanagar is about a modern India and the changing times? Surely we know that already, as well as knowing what this means: women go out to work; the old are superfluous; people become dependent on the economy. Acquarello writes of the new equality between the husband and wife, for now they eat together. Yeah, right, but.…

When the father at last apologises for his bad behaviour, he is surprised to find that Subrata stills loves him. Filial affection and sentiment, not the impersonality of an institution, is what decides these people’s relationships. Edith Simmons, an Anglo-Indian, is sacked because of racial and social prejudice: the employer only wants employees from his village. When Arati rebels against this injustice, her indignation at Mr Mukherjee belongs not to this new world of work (which makes us dependent and weak) but the old world of her family; where women especially are not afraid of expressing spontaneous emotion. The past is alive and well in modern India. It punches back hard!

Mahanagar is about the new penetrating the old, and taking over it. But this is 1963. Much of the old India still remains; and its past, which has endured for millennia, is still holding its own. For sure this is a battle; but neither side has won, though tradition is under severe pressure, and is adapting to survive. There is hope in this film as well as defeat. The loss of both their jobs is not something they - or we - can be insouciant about; and indeed Amartya Sen, who knows the consequences of poverty in India, and is seeped in its cultural heritage, calls the movie tragic. I who don’t, but think I understand the film better, disagree: Mahanagar shows the indomitable spirit of Mother India, which is surely strong enough to survive this setback; and keep much of that rich past. Modernity is a greedy beast, but India is surely too big for its monstrous stomach.