Shoma Chatterji - Woman at the Window: The Material Universe of Rabindranath Tagore Through the Eyes of Satyajit Ray

WOMAN AT THE
WINDOW

The Material Universe of
Rabindranath Tagore through the
Eyes of Satyajit Ray

SHOMA A. CHATTERJI

This book is my humble tribute to Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen and Rituparno Ghosh

To Bill Brown, Things scholar who taught me to read cinema differently

And as prayer to my God, Rabindranath Tagore

Contents

I t is indeed an honour and a privilege to have been invited to write a foreword for this book. Shoma Chatterji is an institution when it comes to Indian film criticism, and needs no introduction. She has for years written very well about all kinds of cinemaIndian and otherwiseand has been a tireless advocate of good cinema to be shown, seen and made here. In that, she is a comrade in a common cause.

The book I am supposed to introduce, however, reaches out to dimensions of cinema far beyond what we ordinarily consider film criticism. Indeed, I was a bit taken aback when the author invited me to write a foreword for a book on Satyajit Rays adaptations of Tagores literary works. I am no expert on Rays cinema, and most certainly not on Tagorean literature. However, a quick look at the book proposal, which informed me that it focused on the world of objects framing Rays cinema, was enough to persuade me to accept Shoma-dis generous invitation.

A number of things flashed through my mind as I read the proposal, which made the book stand out for its unique subject matter, and challenged me to grapple with an essential conundrum of film studies that this book seemed to throw into relief with effortless ease. The conundrum is a simple one: Why has no study of the system of objects underpinning a directors oeuvre been done till date? What mesmerized me when faced with this book was the fact that what I was looking at was indeed the first comprehensive study of the manner in which objects placed within the space of a film is a vital component of directorial vision; indeed, it is a crucial definer of the auteurial status of the film-maker as an artist with a unique vision of cinema. And the reason for being mesmerized was simply the obviousness of the centrality of objects to directorial vision, and the knowledge that no book had been written about so obvious a thing.

This is not to say that film theory has not focused on objects in cinema. A focus on objects within a filmic universe in film criticism is not surprising, given that the placement of objects towards a directorial vision is crucial to that basic element of cinema, something all of us learn on our very first day at film theorymise en scne. And it is precisely within the consideration of the mise en scne of the entire oeuvre of a director such as Max Ophuls that copious compliments have been paid to the manner in which Ophuls meticulously constructs a complex object world to frame his films. However, having said that, no scholarly work on the subject has been forthcoming. And one can only wonder what one could do if one were to attempt a book on the object world making up Hitchcocks cinema. It would most certainly be one of the most pleasurable of exercises in film analysis that one could imagine in all of cinemas history.

To cut a long story short, we are therefore being very pleasantly presented with not only an intellectually stimulating novel slant on the relationship between Rays cinema and Tagorean literature, but also a landmark publication in film studies that is a first of its kind. In being so, the book therefore has the onerous task of representing not only the specific subject matter that it deals with, but also introducing a new analytical approach to film. Needless to say, the first task the book performs with aplombthat of dissecting the manner in which objects, as very material things unto themselves, are absolutely central to the sense and meanings of Rays cinema.

It is a sheer pleasure to read the authors lucid analytical navigation through object after object in scene after scene of Rays cinema. One can, in such passages, hear resonances of the expressions of aesthetic delectation that have marked generations of demotic as well as connoisseurial appreciation of Rays eye for detail. If certain simple things of childhood recalled mark the aesthetic eloquence of Charus initial writings, Rays cinema too performs some such task of creating a memory of simple things in our pasts, which we can recall and write about with lyrical and lucid ease.

More importantly, the wonderful point the author makes is that it is precisely through the manner in which Ray plays up the materiality of his object world, something that cinema allows him to do powerfully, that his filmic adaptations of Tagore novels or stories become autonomous as artistic creations independent of their source. This point will, I am sure, launch a thousand discussions not only in Ray and Tagore studies in particular, but for the relationship between film and literature in general.

The second task that the book performsthat of conceptually opening up a new terrain of cinematic thinkingwill provide the reader with a rich and complex adumbration of existing theoretical literature on objects ranging from Baudrillards construction of a system of objects, to Igor Kopytoffs landmark cultural biography of things. It also allows me, by way of concluding, to return to the vexing issue of the absence of a book such as this until now for film studies, and in doing so, place this book in certain new strands of continental philosophy (perhaps a bit beyond the books explicit remit).

In this respect, one of the first things that struck me when I started to engage with the book was its timed appearance with respect to the ascent in the West of something called object-oriented philosophy, most notably enumerated by Graham Harman, a member of the Speculative Realism group of philosophers, which includes, amongst others, the darling of contemporary French theory, Quentin Meillassoux. Dedicated to overturning the anthropocentrism of philosophical and social thought that holds human beings as the centre of all existence, Harman and a few others have posited a radical autonomy of objects with respect to human will. Objects are things unto themselves and need to be seen as independent of human interest.

It would not be too far-fetched to posit that one of the reasons for the lack of books about the object worlds of cinema has been film theorys rampant anthropocentrismits obsessive focus on the human, the social and the cultural. The excessive focus on the human interest in films is what might have masked the possibility of a comprehensive look at objects in cinema as radically autonomous things. After all, film theory, until now, has been very substantially a fellow-traveller of theories elsewhere. It is not surprising, therefore, that it has shared the anthropocentrism of such past theories. Is it then a function of the zeitgeist that a book such as this, dedicated to emphasizing the centrality of objects to film, appears at a time when theory takes a radical turn towards objects elsewhere? This is a delicious question that I shall leave hanging in the air, awaiting clarification through collegial debate and discussion.

But beyond this, what really tickled my imagination while reading this book was the feeling that theatre directors and, more profoundly, film-makers, were probably practising their own brand of object-oriented philosophy much before theory arrived on the scene. It is in the nature of such things to play up the object. Antonioni comes to mind most emphatically. And it is possible that the turn towards the object in contemporary theory is a result of the fruition of the cinematic that has been brewing inside our modern senses for so long. Perhaps, through this turn, cinema finally begins to stake its claim as