Nayak, a Great Film By Indian Director Satyajit Ray

     It's a pleasure to encounter the work of a great actor for the first time.  Nayak (Hero, in Bengali), from 1966, directed by Satyajit Ray, stars in the lead role Uttam Kumar, among the finest film actors I've ever seen, judging at least by his remarkable performance in this entertaining drama about a film star's spiritual crisis unfolding as he journeys by train from Calcutta to Delhi to receive an award.

     Satyajit Ray, one of India's greatest directors, wrote the screenplay with Kumar in mind and intended to not even make the film if the actor refused the part.  The film got made, though, and at the height of Uttam Kumar's popularity, a perfect confluence since the story deals with a famous actor's growing doubt about the price that success has wrought on his moral character, spirituality, and his past connection to ordinary people when he was just a nobody working as a theater actor in a small company.

     Ray at the beginning takes several minutes before showing the face of Arindam Mukherjee (the movie star played by Kumar).  Instead, as he prepares to depart from his big house where at least one servant works, we see the back of his head out of focus during the opening credits as he looks in the mirror, combing his hair, and shaving with the latest electric razor.  The image, focusing gradually, cuts to shots of the actor packing his bag, putting on the fanciest and most handsome socks I've ever seen along with expensive shoes.  He speaks with his younger brother, whom we see before the protagonist.  The brother has benefitted from his sibling's success, seems to act as a factotum.

     Finally, Arindam's face comes into view as he eats breakfast with one of his directors who's striving to get him to commit to their next picture.  The actor commands the relationship, pointing his fork tines rudely at the compliant older man, dismissing the business talk, saying he doesn't feel like it now, thus wasting his director's time.  A portrait of a self-absorbed and apparently shallow movie star begins to emerge, but...

     Once on the train, eyes follow him wherever he goes.  He shares a compartment with a sick teenaged girl and her mother.  The girl looks at him admiringly, a fan of his movies, the mother and daughter are clearly thrilled to have such a personage in their presence.  He accepts this adulation, as well as all of the amazed stares he gets from others on the train and on the several train platforms they stop at, with the aplomb that comes with the flowering of experience.

     Self-confident, cocky, he plays the hero type among these people, the nayak they believe in as the great man they've seen on the movie screens of their home towns and cities.  This pose crumbles over the film's course as Arindam evaluates his life, dreams and remembers painful moments that proved decisive in his rise to fame.  These memories are provoked by the inquiries of a women's magazine editor, Aditi (Sharmila Tagore), riding in the cheap seats with two friends.  At her girlfriend's urging, she attempts an interview with Arindam, but he rejects the idea at first, saying he prefers to keep the mundane elements of his life to himself, not wanting to spoil the fans' views of his heroic cinematic personality.  She accepts this, but later he seeks her out after having a nightmare in which he sinks in a landscape of paper money, as in quicksand.  

     He commences to give her an interview for her magazine.  She's a good listener, and what's more, she's the only person on the train not impressed by his celebrity.  With her, he can just be himself and from that psychological standpoint he reveals some painful memories associated with his rise in the film world.  Flashbacks unfold, revealing some difficult experiences that put him where he ends up at the top of success, dependent on whether or not his movies flop.

     He relates how a college friend with leftist politics got in touch and took him, without saying where they were going, to speak to some striking workers.  The workers cheer him, calling him hero, nayak, but Arindam can't get out of his car, hiding his face, mortified by the consequences he'd face if he addressed them, for that would identify him with left wing politics and sink his career.  He wants to help his friend, offers him any amount of money, but he trembles in shame and self-loathing.  The relative darkness of his car's interior contrasted with dozens of white shirts worn by the strikers, his terrified face, make for a flashback qualifying as a lived nightmare for this image-conscious character.

     The scene displays Uttam Kumar's acting to great effect.  The depths of his suffering come through, illuminated as a portrait of a man who sold himself, but understandably, to explore cinematic acting and to receive the largesse coming from that.  It's the death by stroke of his theater director and mentor that pushes Arindam to films, where he first works with a famous old movie star who acts on camera in and outdated style derived from his early fame in the 1920s and 1930s (Nayak takes place in the 1960s).  Arindam prefers the newer film acting styles of Bogart and Brando, a more naturalistic method which the old actor scolds him for employing.  Years later, the old man comes by Arindam's house begging for a role in the latter's next film.  Arindam politely brushes him off, even noting the old man's appearance of bad health.  

     Again, as with the strike scene, Arindam fails to come through for someone because he can't let himself go to bat for another.  His all-important career, with its attendant riches, overrides his expressions of humanity and compassion.  So is he a hero, a nayak, or is that entirely an illusion?

     His heart and soul as well as spirit becomes awakened, at least a little by the end, in his train journey relationship with Aditi, the magazine editor.  Her patience and frequent silences invite him to express his thoughts to her alone.  Still, near the end, he says something like, "I don't suppose we'll ever see each other again [note that she's not a fan of his films nor has she seen them] but I hope you got enough for your article."

     She takes her several pages of notes from her purse and tears them up, explaining, "I'll keep it as a memory."

     Here, Arindam has encountered a person who really wants nothing from him, but values his talk and his genuineness in telling her his real story.  She thus in that moment treats him as a fellow human being, not as some god of the movie screen.  Will Arindam learn from this experience, or will it change him for the better?  We don't know, for Ray ends the film with Arindam disembarking from the train in Delhi, swarmed by fans and journalists, cool sunglasses hiding eyes just recently having gazed into the eyes of Aditi, a woman taking nothing from him, having simply given him her ears on a train journey amounting to a spiritual journey.  He smiles at his fans, signs autographs, plays the role of hero for people who perhaps need this man to look up to, and in that, he serves an important role even if it's a very difficult one to play, and in that sacrifice of his genuine personality, he is a hero.

     Nayak is a beautiful and emotionally affecting film.  It takes place mostly on the train.  Satyajit Ray's characters, even minor ones, like the porter, give off a sense of fully rounded people.  Subrata Mitra's cinematography is superb, the film's black and white images are lovely to look at.  The standout, though, is Uttam Kumar's performance as Arindam.  He reminds me of Marcello Mastroianni in that he, like that great Italian actor, has a calm handsome face looking out at the world, receiving its externality which becomes internal emotions expressed on the face according to the situation.

     A face that listens, in a sense.

     Some film performers give off a mesmerizing quality, the viewer can't look away from them when they're on screen.  Uttam Kumar, like Mastroianni, Brando, James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, Alain Delon, and others, all have this quality, something not quantifiable or even explainable, really.

     I recommend this film.  It's part of the Criterion Collection although I watched it on YouTube.

Vic Neptune