THE DESOLATION OF CELEBRITY
Though Satyajit Ray’s films belong to a category variously known as art films or parallel cinema, he was fortunate to belong to the rarefied heights of celebrity. Times were different back then and box-office success wasn’t the only parameter of success, nor was serious a bad word in the industry. Though he wore his own celebrity lightly (Ray is still arguably one of the best known Indian cinema artistes globally, and certainly the best known Indian director) Ray, the eternal observer, would certainly have watched the life of famous actors (I use the term without gendering) very closely. No wonder then that his second original fiction screenplay (arguably also his best) was for a movie about a celebrity actor.
For the leading role Ray chose actual Bengali superstar Uttam Kumar (even his next film Chiriakhana was with the same actor) blurring the line between the film world and the real world. This was apt for the subject matter: Who is the audience watching at any given moment – Uttam Kumar the actor, Uttam Kumar the person, or Arindam Mukherjee the actor/character? Welcome to the deceitful world of cinema – F For Fake, anyone?
The Public Persona(L)
Arindam is the sole focus of the film. Hardly any scene doesn’t include him, and yet Arindam is hardly ever alone. He is with his financier, his secretary, his one-man-entourage, his mentor, his lover, his fans, his detractors, his interviewer. Arindam, the actor, is not a man who can be alone because he no longer exists alone. He is a creation of an industry (Uttam Kumar, like many actors of his times, didn’t use his real name), a product for consumption, and three successive flops can wipe him off everyone’s collective memory.
To stay alive, Arindam needs to remain in a perpetual state of being consumed. At least he can thank his lucky stars that he was not around for the age of tabloids and social media.
The question then arises that does Arindam have any control on how he can live his life? After all, his success, his fame, his money, all depend on his fans paying to watch him. What they think of him has to remain top-of-mind if he doesn’t want to lose his success. He cannot even be seen publicly with a childhood friend at a workers’ strike, even though his friend needs his help. Before he was a star Arindam didn’t need to worry about appearances and could take a stand based on his own beliefs. But beliefs can severely damage a reputation if it dithers from a safe, conservative public opinion. A male actor cannot be a communist, a female actor cannot start a family, and so on.
[Interestingly, in the film we see an ex-stage actor who is nearly prostituted by her husband to get a business contract, but when she mentions her desire to become a film actress, her husband reacts with such scorn as to leave us in no doubt how lowly a female actor is in some people’s eyes. Privately-traded object of desire is a-okay, but publicly-consumed artistic commodity – a thousand times no!]
Even as Arindam undertakes a train journey (which is the backdrop for the entire film) to accept a prestigious award in Delhi, he is parallelly chased by the salacious news of him being involved in a brawl at a party. The two overlap so closely that, in a brilliant piece of writing by Ray, the man at the centre of it all doesn’t even know which of these pieces of news anyone is discussing behind his back at any time. When someone says they read about him in the paper, Arindam actually has to ask them which piece they read.
The train is actually a beautiful story-telling device (better than the car journey in Wild Strawberries) because behind every closed cabin door, or at every table in the dining-car Arindam chances upon a different perception of him as a product. One cabin contains a critic, one cabin contains an adoring fan, one cabin has someone who wants to use him, on and on until he cannot find a place to rest without being disturbed. Appropriately enough he spends most of the film going from one seat to another never being able to settle.
The Waking Dream
Does anybody ever know what celebrity will bring? Someone coming from a humble family may not know how it feels to suddenly become the cynosure of so many eyes. At the other end, even someone born into already famous surroundings, such as members of a royal family, may not know how close some scandal may hit someday.
Arindam’s frightful dream sequence is quite an effective way to bring the audience in to his mind. And it may be the only way to show us Arindam without Arindam getting in the way. The mountains of money, a hypnotic soundtrack, the ringing of the phantom phone, the skeleton hands resembling scorched bushes, sinking, drowning, reaching for a hand to save you, a ghastly figure from the past – the entire sequence is rich in symbolism and fatalism.
The initial success, it seems to say, doesn’t last. It cannot protect you from mortality, from failure. Rather, it is that success which may suck you in to your doom, and even those who could have saved you at one time, whose help you rejected because you have to try things for yourself, can no longer rescue you.
And how could Arindam possibly have accepted his mentor, Shankar’s, advice to reject the world of films and remain in the world of theatre? After all, theatre doesn’t fulfil any hunger except that of performance, and a man has many other hungers in life. Freedom is a double-edged sword – freedom to choose, and then freedom to live with consequences. It can never be one without the other. And yet an artist must be free, he must forge his own path otherwise art dies in him. After all what is an artist who will not speak his mind, and what is a human who will not explore her full potential to be of aid to others.
A dream is not a plan. Nobody knows how it ends. It is a sum total of your life experienced without any agency on your part. You are a viewer and a player in the events of a dream. And it may reveal parts of you that you are not consciously aware of, parts you may have buried. You can escape certain death in one dream and be reduced to a puddle of tears in another. Sometimes you may wake up before things become too dark, but more often we sleep through every excruciating bit and wake up afraid or disgusted.
It is fair to say, therefore, that someone like Arindam could never be aware of the stakes of stardom, despite warnings from his mentor. It has a seduction and also true gratification. One can achieve things that make all your talent worthwhile. One can even do good for others in ways that no ordinary person could. There are obvious upsides because why else would somebody risk something that others have warned about? You may not be able to stand with your friend but you can give him monetary aid.
Fame is a shape-shifting monster that also pays your bills. Who can ever hatch plans around that?
Eternal Duality
A celebrity is human, but one who exists in a much more heightened state of experience. It is said that fame is a drug, it distorts reality, gives massive doses of euphoria followed by despair. Everything that normal people experience, a celebrity experiences many times magnified. It is not just the money, there are far richer businesspeople in the world, it is the adulation – everybody wants to be with you, wants a piece of you. Meeting a celebrity is like meeting a god.
But these gods are also performing monkeys. They learn to sing and dance for us, appear in silly poses in magazines for us, stop to smile and take a picture with us. If they get drunk and punch someone, they are answerable to us. Their personal life is illicit unless revealed to us. They are gods who live only to serve us.
The character of Arindam is depicted with such sensitivity and even some pathos that even a celebrity-sceptic like myself feels protective of him. This is a man who is constantly on the move, because sitting in one place too long traps him. He is also someone who is eternally straddling two opposing forces, something once again neatly depicted through the two opposing news articles published about him on the same day.
He is hero and villain, victim and perpetrator. He is constantly moving in the direction of success and failure. People love him and hate him and are disgusted by him depending on what they see in him. He can earn a fan and lose a fan in the same sentence. Somebody can fawn over him while cheating him. A friend can gain respect for you and lose faith in you in the same car journey. He gets unlimited love while losing loved ones.
Every single action, every single word, has an equal and opposite reaction. Arindam is Schrödinger’s cat, at once alive and dead, depending on who’s observing. He is king Midas. He is a lab rat.
Through the journey, there is only one person who is able to see glimpses of the real Arindam, the journalist Aditi. Even she takes pot-shots at him initially, torn between the value he can bring to her magazine and the kind of celebrity-driven journalism she abhors. Arindam is both desired and derided by her.
Yet she is someone he opens up to. That she cannot make up her mind about him is an invitation for him to have a say, which he wouldn’t otherwise get. He finds he can talk to her freely about his life, his betrayals, the story behind the brawl, more honestly than he could with anyone, leave alone a journalist.
Aditi is tempted to write a tell-all article about everything he tells her, even taking notes in secret. And it is not as if Arindam would be unaware of the risk he runs, but he doesn’t put up barriers between them. And his faith is well-placed because she discards her notes and decides not to write those things about him.
Is it possible that Arindam has finally found someone he can trust? Someone who still thinks of him as a human being and not a commodity. His vulnerable self needs a friend and partner and maybe she is that person.
So it comes as a shock to see the final scene, when Arindam is mobbed by a welcome party at the station and looks like he wants to break away from them and his eyes follow Aditi with a lovelorn look. Aditi is oblivious to his presence. She doesn’t even wave goodbye to him as she walks away with her father. Once again the celebrity is in two parallel states – he is centre of the world, and without any centre himself.
Their story ends as the journey ends, but it is the celebrity who is left reaching for a hand that will rescue him, while the ordinary person just walks away.