Nayak (1966).

Review #1422: Nayak.

Cast: 
Uttam Kumar (Arindam Mukherjee), Sharmila Tagore (Aditi Sengupta), Bireswar Sen (Mukunda Lahiri), Somen Bose (Shankar), Nirmal Ghosh (Jyoti), Premangshu Bose (Biresh), Jogesh Chatterjee (Aghore Chattopadhyay), Sumita Sanyal (Promila Chatterjee), Ranjit Sen (Haren Bose), and Bharati Devi (Manorama) Written and Directed by Satyajit Ray.

Review: 
"For a popular medium, the best kind of inspiration should derive from life and have its roots in it. No amount of technical polish can make up for artificiality of the theme and the dishonesty of treatment."

When it comes to great Indian filmmakers, the one who ranks up as one if not the first to mention is Satyajit Ray. Ray was born in Calcutta (now known as Kolkata) in 1921, and he initially aspired to do visual design as a career (working in an advertising agency), where he did book covers and designed his own typefaces. In 1947, he was one of the founders of the Calcutta Film Society in 1947, which screened films such as Battleship Potemkin (1925) and other films from Europe and Russia despite small membership for years. Two key directors helped influence him to become a filmmaker. He helped Jean Renoir in finding locations in the countryside for his film The River in 1949 (the film was released two years later), and the two had a meeting that involve Ray's interest in the work Pather Panchali, which Renoir encouraged him to do. The following year, he was sent to London by his agency to do work there, and one key film he saw in his time there was Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948), which impacted him enough to want to do a film, which he would do over the course of over two years with his personal savings. The resulting film in Pather Panchali (1955) proved a tremendous success in both India and abroad. Over the course of the next thirty-six years, he would do 28 further films, numerous documentaries and short films, earning accolades and attention for his Apu Trilogy (1955-1959) alongside his work as a composer and fiction/screen writing, receiving both the civilian award Bharat Ratna from his native India and an Honorary Academy Award shortly before his death in 1992.

Sometimes it helps to do a film in the middle of a great career, particularly one as interesting as this proves to be with the questions it wants to raise about celebrity. What does it mean to be famous? Where does the time go when it comes to living a life where there are people who admire (and on the other side despise) what you do? What is the worth of a hero (star)? Set primarily on a train with flashbacks and dreams that gradually reveal what makes up a supposed hero in 117 minutes, Nayak [Hero] is a captivating and somber movie, one of capable intelligence and craftsmanship from Ray (who also did the music and co-edited the film with Dulal Dutta) and a cast that holds its own in capturing a portrait of a man trapped in his own celebrity from empathy. This is helped through one key nightmare involving money and being sunken deep into it without escape. Kumar, a prolific actor of Bengali and Hindi films that Ray wrote the film in mind for, is devastatingly effective in naturalism with a confident role layered with anxiety that is filled with conviction in charisma and fear that permeates beyond his eyes. One can see a star just as well as one can see arrogance and also unraveling fear. Tagore (in her third of five collaborations with Ray) matches up with him with wise consideration that counteracts the adoration most give to its lead in terms of attention with her own thinking that we find ourselves interested in, an observer with her own degree of criticality that serves her well. The others do well in filling the parts of the train with their own little stories around our main character, whether that means an encounter with kids and people who want autographs or people who have their own interest in minds, which each comes to play when the climax arises with a drunken moment for our lead. That proves to be a harrowing moment, after seeing all of the flashbacks to a life with success and regret within. By the time of the arrival of the train to its metaphorical and literal stop, one finds themselves fairly satisfied by where the trip has taken them, one that invites questions and answers (of sorts) to make something worthy checking out among Ray's immense career full of natural and carefully crafted films.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.