Nayak (The Hero)
Directed by Satyajit Ray
Written by Satyajit Ray
1966/India
R.D. Banshal & Co.
First viewing/Amazon Instant
[box] Sankar: A film actor is nothing but a puppet, a puppet in the hands of the director, a puppet in the hands of the cameraman, in the hands of the sound-recorder. He is also a puppet in the hands of the editor who cuts and pastes the movie.[/box]
Excellent film from my beloved Satyajit Ray, somehow channeling Fellini a bit.
Arindan Mukherjee (Uttam Kumar) is a matinee idol. On this particular day, he awakes to a scandalous newspaper story about a drunken brawl he was involved in the previous night. He decides to take the train to Delhi to pick up an acting award rather than take a plane as previously planned. On this particular train are a number of passengers who want to get into the business and even more with opinions on the sad state of Indian cinema.
Mukherjee agrees to grant an interview to beautiful young journalist Aditi (Sharmila Tagore), who is in the camp that sees nothing of value in Indian cinema. He opens up to her and in the process comes face to face with the moral bankruptcy of his life and chosen career. He worries that he is about to lose it all, a message seeming to come from all sides as well as from his restless dreams.
I loved this movie. Here, Ray seems to pick up a cue from Fellini and Antonioni and produces one of the great meta films about filmmaking. The dream sequence (see clip) where the actor falls into quicksand made of mountains of cash is memorable. There are other slightly surreal aspects to this that I have not seen in his other work. Ray also wrote the effective score. Highly recommended.
Dream sequence
