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In a 1948
article entitled, "What is Wrong with Indian Films," Ray
criticized India's movement away from art and towards
either musicals or heavy mysticism:
“The
raw material of the cinema is life itself. It is incredible that a
country which has inspired so much painting and music and poetry
should fail to move the moviemaker. He has only to keep his eyes
open, and his ears. Let him do
so.”
For all of
India's thousands of years of cultural development, one would think
that its cinema would reflect something of a corresponding breath
and depth. Unfortunately, in India, quite the contrary is
true, especially in the wake of the explosion of its entertainment
industry, better known as "Bollywood." It is clear that the
overwhelmingly sanguine temperament of its indigenous peoples
has fed the fuel for its banal cinematic preferences,
but is this really an excuse to go completely
brain-dead? And how is this any different from the world's
"developed" nations, which should know better but which also
exercise a strong taste for the most excruciatingly superficial
filmmaking? It's like a plague of spiritual dullness that has
swept across the globe, leaving in its wake a
spiritual body count far greater than any global pandemic.
In fact, working not too far away from India, Sergei Paradjanov's spiritually charged,
poetically surreal re-creations of history in The Color of
Pomegranates, The Legend of Suram Fortress and
Ashik-Kerib proved that great art could be made in ancient
cultures - in this case, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan,
respectively.
All the more
reason that the wonderful early films of India's most notable
auteur, the Bengali director Satyajit Ray, should be considered one
of the highest achievements in world cinema. While not quite on
the level of Tarkovsky or Bresson, Ray's cinema does
contain enough poeticism and individuality to lift his work out of
the mundane mud and earn it the moniker "transcendent". (With all
due respect to Paul Schrader and his book "Transcendental
Style in Film," Ray's work is certainly more transcendent than
Ozu's, whose films are constantly being marred by his
fixation on the family melodrama - as if voluntary family bondage
was supposed to be the ultimate goal of every human's
existence!) In fact, the great Japanese autuer Akira Kurosawa
himself once remarked, “Not to have seen the cinema of Ray
means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the
moon.”
However, it
was first an outsider, the French director Jean Renoir, who made the
first great art film in India. Called The River, Renoir's
film is based on the autobiographical novel by Rumer Godden, a
British citizen who spent many decades of her life there. The
title refers to the Bengal river, a tributary of the Ganges and is
surprisingly poetic in the way it shows the mystical ties Indians
have with these waters. Indeed, Renoir's objective from the outset
was to make "a film about India without elephants and tiger hunts”.
And in this he succeeded brilliantly. Despite the difficulties of
shooting the film in the late-forties - Mahatma Gandhi had just been
assassinated - the film's objective remains resolutely fixed on things of a higher nature
- “a story based on the immemorial themes of childhood, love,
and death,” as Renoir himself put it. Perhaps the most memorable
moment of the entire film, though, happens towards the end as the
great tree, which holds deep symbolic importance in the weaving
together of the lives of the characters (and India itself), suddenly
bursts into full blossom in one of the most purely transcendent
sequences in the history of cinema.
Satyajit Ray, who
incidentally worked as an uncredited assistant to Mr.
Renoir during the making of The River, would soon
build on this scene in his groundbreaking first film Pather
Pancheli (Song of the Road). Eventhough Ray's film was shot in
B&W and in circumstances that were as impoverished as the
world being portrayed in the film, the poetic juxtaposition of man
to nature has hardly ever been done better. There is actually
very little plot to speak of, reminding one more of the improvised
naturalness of De Sica's Bicycle Thief than anything that
had come before in Indian Cinema. The image and the sound are
the real protagonists in this work of art. Once seen, who can ever
forget those insects skitting along the surface of a pond,
while the thrillingly precise accompaniment provided by the
legendary Ravi Shankar finds just the right pulse of nature! Or Apu
and Durga's walk through a field of tall, white, willowy reeds
as they discover a train outside their village. Or
Durga's ritual dance during the first monsoon rain. Or the
terrifying night as the storm rips apart Durga's room as she lies
dying. Or the long-absent father's approach to the crumbling house,
the fallen Mango tree branch and the lone chewing cow. Each one of
these images has infinitely more weight than the multitudinous
factory of images supplied by Bollywood and most other cinemas of
the world.
The reason these images impress themselves deeply on our
consciousness (and often for many years hence) is that they have a
greater power behind them. It is the power of the intuitive
perception of the human spirit. Everything else is just the product
of the brain, and so either images don't stick at all or, at best,
have a fleeting presence. Ask most people about the imagery of a
certain film and they'll respond by going on and on about the actors
or actresses doing this thing or that. Or maybe a set piece, like
the plane on the runway at the end of Casablanca. But for Ray,
as with any striving human being, the imagery is
synonymous with spirituality. Furthermore, upon seeing DeSica's The
Bicycle Thief, Ray wrote in a 1951 essay, “The present
blind worship of technique emphasises the poverty of genuine
inspiration among our directors,” Ray continued. “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 theme and dishonesty of treatment. The filmmaker
must turn to life, to reality. De Sica, and not [Cecil B.] DeMille,
should be his ideal.” Mr. Ray also had the eye of a cinema poet and
discovered an abundance of poetry in the reality of his
mise-en-scene. His work has influenced an abundance of diverse
filmmakers, including Otar Iosseliani (There Lived a Singing
Blackbird), Andrei Tarkovsky
(Ivan's Childhood), Sergei Paradjanov (Shadows of
Forgotten Ancestors), and on and on. In fact, Ray's greatest
sequences have few rivals in cinema history. These include the
aforementioned scenes in Pather Pancheli as well
as:
Aparajito
(The Unvanquished):
1. The
stunning opening montage in the "holy" city of Benares on the
Ganges. During the morning call, there is a succession of
beautiful shots (in amazing shadow and light compositions) of birds
in flight throughout the city. It is a thrilling sequence of images,
mysterious and life-affirming. His editing is absolutely
transcendent, reminding one of Artavazd Peleshian's
poetic interweaving of images. The scene ends on a glorious view of
the Ganges, with the birds now resting in the
foreground.
2. The
unbelievable scene of Apu going to feed the monkeys, who have taken
over a temple. The obvious parody of the scene is tempered by
its complete naturalness.
Apu Sansur
(World of Apu)
1. Apart from the
much lauded scenes of marital bliss between Apu and Aparna, the
greatest part of the film is unquestionably towards its end. Apu,
weary from years of drifting (in a state of anger and confusion over
the death of his wife during childbirth), journeys to
a village, where his young son is being cared for. With each
step Apu takes, we celebrate his return to nature. The concrete
structures of his old way of life fall away and he begins a new path
of rediscovery of the joys and simplicity of the natural world.
Apu's years of disappointment, tragedy, suffering fall to the
wayside as we have come full circle with him, back to the world of
his childhood in Pather Pancheli. The texture and
poetry of the elements are beautifully caught by the extraordinary
lilting camera work. But even this is outshined by the transcendent
glow on Apu's face, especially as he reaches the clearing and stands
before the power of the light of the sun. In its stark simplicity,
this scene represents one of the finest moments ever of cinematic
transcendence: just a man before his God.
2. Earlier in the
film there is a powerful scene, where the highly-educated
Apu applies for a job writing labels for food jars. When he is
taken to the workroom, the camera not only records the
depravity of the working conditions, but, even more devastating, it
captures the spiritually dead, expressionless gaze of one of
the workers squelched by that environment.
"The Man of today...no longer knows what is
spiritual. He has substituted the working of the intellect for it,
and considers intellectual activity to be spiritual activity. This
now gives him the final blow which brings about his downfall, for
he is clinging to something that remains on this earth together
with his body when he himself must enter the
beyond!..
Nine-tenths of
today's sciences must be accounted as false activity and useless
striving in Creation. The sciences as they are now
practised hinder the ascent of those who are concerned with them;
they bring about stagnation and retrogression, but never that
progress which leads to ascent. Man cannot unfold his wings in the
so-called sciences of today; he can never achieve what he
could achieve, for his wings have
been pitifully clipped and destroyed. Only in simplicity of
thought and action does greatness lie and power develop, for
simplicity alone strives towards the Primordial Laws of Creation
and harmonises with them.
Man, however, has bound
and blocked himself up with his earth sciences!
Of what use is it when a
man attempts to spend his life on earth in finding out when the
creature fly came into existence and how long it is likely to
remain on this earth, and many other similar questions that seem
to be important for human knowledge. Just ask yourselves whom he
really benefits with such knowledge! Only his vanity! Nobody else
in the world! For this knowledge has nothing to do with ascent in
any way whatever. Man derives no advantage from it, nor does it
uplift him! Nobody gains anything from it!..
The man who enjoys each
flower of the field, and who lifts his eyes to Heaven in gratitude
for it, stands much higher before God than he who can
scientifically analyse each flower without recognising the
greatness of his Creator therein.
Man does not gain
anything by being the fastest runner, a skilful boxer, a bold
driver, or if he knows whether the horse appeared on earth before
or after the fly! Such a volition only strives for something
ridiculous, i. e., for vanity. It brings no blessing to humanity,
no progress, and no gain for their existence in this Creation, but
only encourages them to fritter away their time upon
earth...
What man needs to
investigate in the first place is only that which helps in his
ascent and thus also serves to further Creation. In all his
activities he should ask himself what advantage they will bring
both to himself and to mankind. One goal must henceforth dominate
every man - to recognise and also to fulfil the place he, as a
human being, must occupy in Creation!..
Such is the simplicity
that lies in the working of the Laws of Creation, as well as in
the laws themselves, that no college education is required to
recognise them properly! Every man has the ability to understand
them if only he so wills. It is extremely easy to observe them. It
is only made difficult by the conceited learnedness of men who
love to coin big words for the most simple things, and who thus
clumsily splash about in Creation, as if in clear water, assuming
an air of importance and consequently dimming the original healthy
clearness.
With all his false
learning man is the only one among the creatures who neglects to
fill his place in Creation by swinging in its rhythm and acting
correctly...
He who does not
embrace a high and luminous goal in his earthly activities cannot
exist in the future. He must disintegrate in accordance with the
Divine Laws which permeate Creation strengthened by the Light.
Also spiritually he will be reduced to dust as a useless fruit
that does not fulfil its purpose in this
Creation.
This happening is quite
simple and real, but its effects upon mankind as they still show
themselves today will be formidable in the
extreme!..
Satyajit Ray grew
up in a family of prominent intellectuals and went on to attend
the University of Calcutta. So, when it came time for him to begin
making films, it was only natural for him to gravitate to the
theme of spirituality vs. intellectualism. In Pather
Pancheli, as Apu experiences childhood in the natural, if
impoverished surroundings of his village, Ray is at his
most spiritual, child-like and freely poetic. There are
long sequences where no words are exchanged. Scenes are held
for longer-than-usual periods of time. The emphasis is on
freely experiencing life at its most basic, life from a child's
point of view. (Isn't it interesting that some of the most poetic
films ever made - Red Balloon, Ivan's Childhood, The Silence,
Fanny and Alexander - are filmed from a child's vantage
point?) The knowledge of the outside world is only rarely imposed.
This mostly has to do with the absent father, whose letters are the
only real reminders of civilization. And, of course, when the father
actually does come home at the end of the film, he is the one to
take his family into that very civilization. Nevertheless, for the
entirety of his film, Ray has intuited perfectly that the world of
the child first and foremost belongs in nature.
 "Until the spirit breaks through in the years of their
maturity the children of earthmen have only a predominantly
animistic intuitive perception. Naturally they are already set
aglow inwardly by the spirit, i. e., they are not merely like noble
animals in the highest state of development, but already very much
more. Nevertheless the
animistic prevails and is
therefore decisive. It is absolutely imperative that this be borne
in mind by every educator, and the basis of an education strictly
adjusted in accordance with it, if the result is
to become complete and without harmful effects on the child. The
child must first receive full understanding in the great activity of
all that is animistic, to which at this time it is still more open
than to that which is spiritual. In this way its eyes will open in
joy and purity to the beauties of Nature which it sees around
it!
The streams, the mountains, the forests, the
meadows and the flowers, as well as the animals, will then become
familiar to every child, who will be securely anchored in this
realm, which is to provide the field of activity during its sojourn
on earth. It will then stand quite firmly and fully conscious in
Nature, in the whole world of animistic activity, full of
understanding and thus well equipped and quite ready to
work with its spirit also, uplifting and furthering to an even
greater extent all that surrounds it like a huge garden! Only
thus
can it become
a true gardener in Creation!
On
this basis and not otherwise
must each maturing child stand when the spirit breaks through,
healthy in body and soul, joyfully developed and prepared on
that soil to which every child belongs. The brain
must not be one-sidedly over-burdened with things that will never
be needed during its life on earth, things which do cost great
pains to acquire, consequently wasting its strength and weakening
body and soul!"(from "The Child" by Abd-ru-shin,
"In the Light of Truth: The Grail
Message".)
At the beginning
of Aparajito, the world is still fresh and vital
eventhough Ray has now transported us to the city, albeit
an ancient and mysterious one. Apu is still a child, and, like
all children, he loves to explore. And so Ray is still also a child
in a cinematic sense and his images are vitally poetic and
essential - everything matters, everything is important because
everything has become an experience for the spirit. But
soon the tide begins to turn as Apu begins the natural process of
thirsting for the knowledge of the world. His desire for an
education is strong. Indeed, even at this young age, he has already
set himself apart from many others in his caste because of this
desire and his native abilities.
As Apu enters
school, there is a marked shift away from poetic cinematic
imagery towards a more stifled, "academic" approach. It is
as if Ray is cinematically reflecting Apu's assimilation,
i.e. the article cultivation of the frontal brain and the move
away from the free experiencing of the natural world. The poignancy
of this shift cannot even be articulated in words. It is a tragedy
that has no other parallel in life and in cinema. There is no more
sweep and desire to embrace the life of the spirit. All that is left
is pedanticism and false ambition. And were it not for the ongoing
interest in the life of this boy, who we have grown to care about
deeply, there would be little to distinguish Ray's cinematic
style from the mainstream. But that, after all, is the point!
Apu, like Ray, is slowly joining the intellectual mainstream of
contemporary life. Turning his back on the natural world of his
childhood, his real life has ended and so has Ray's.
This is not to
say, of course, that one should drop everything,
find their own Walden Pond and pitch a tent! The world of
today, which mankind has cultivated for millennia through
a twisted, dark volition, would be merciless towards
such an individual. (A street person once told us about the
tremendous difficulty he was having reassimilating
himself after being away from society for a long period of
time. Just the process of reacquiring his identification and
social security cards, so he could get a job washing cars, was a
Kafka-esque bureaucratic nightmare. And this was a person who
wanted to rejoin the human race!)
Apu
wins a college scholarship and goes off to Calcutta to continue his
studies, leaving his lonely mother to continue her
life as a village retinue. When Apu returns to the country
to visit her, he finds himself at odds with the gentle flow of life
in this natural environment. Instead of taking this opportunity to
rejuvenate his spirit, he becomes restless and bored and soon
leaves. Eventually, the health of Apu's
mother deteriorates, but, because of his exams, he arrives too
late to be with her as she departs this
life.
An
overly-cultivated intellect causes a gulf between its
own priorities and the spirit's needs. The intellect needs
constant stimulation, which it has trouble getting in a quiet
natural setting. It craves the constant, deadening movement of
the city, the endless chatter with one's friends and the
one-sidedness of a false education.
However, it must also be said that the intellect
itself can and should be a fine and necessary tool, when used in
harmony with the volition of the spirit. What becomes dangerous is
the one-sided cultivation of the intellect by an educational
establishment concerned with strictly earthly knowledge and nothing
else. Today, more than ever, one must become aware of
the disastrous consequences brought on by being cut
off from the life of the spirit.
"Thus there
is no field left for the spirit, no possibility for it to become
active!
And things
are not much better for the young man! He is weary and fatigued
from over-burdening study in schools, his nerves overwrought! He
provides only a diseased soil for the spirit breaking through, a
brain distorted by and satiated with useless things. Thus the
spirit cannot work as it should, and in turn cannot develop itself
properly, but is stunted and completely smothered by the weight of
the dross! There only remains an unquenchable yearning to give
some inkling as to the presence of the immured and suppressed
human spirit. Finally even this longing is lost in the mad whirl
of earthly haste and greed which is first meant to act as a bridge
over this spiritual vacuum, and which later on becomes a habit and
a need!
This is the manner in which man
now goes through his earthly life! And for the
most part the faulty upbringing is to blame for it!" (from
"The Child" by Abd-ru-shin,
"In the Light of Truth: The Grail
Message".)
"Everything that can be proved by
the intellect is earthly theory, nothing else! And the scholarship
of today is based on this, and presents itself to us in this
way! But that has nothing to do with intelligence, i.e., with
true knowledge! There are scholars who, according to the
Primordial Laws of Creation, i.e., according to reality, count
among the most narrow-minded of human spirits, even
though they possess a great reputation on earth and are highly
esteemed by men. In Creation itself they only play a ridiculous
role!
Some of
them, however, can become really dangerous to the human spirits of
this earth, because they lead them along false and narrow ways on
which the spirit is never able to unfold itself. They suppress
them, seeking to impose upon them their own scholarship, which is
fundamentally nothing but narrow-minded earthly intellectualism
veiled with tinsel.
Awake and expand, you human spirits, make
room for upward flight. You are not made for the purpose of
remaining only in the gross material sphere; you are to make
use of it, but not to consider it your
home.
In these perverted days many a farm laborer is
more spiritually awake and thus more valuable in
Creation than a scholar who has entirely lost his pure intuitive
perception. It has really a deep meaning when people talk of
dry intellectual work or of dry scholarship. How often
does the most simple person hit unswervingly on the right thing
with an expression of the intuitive perception! The expression
"dry" here means "without life", thus dead! There is no life in
it! And the saying carries truth within it!" (from "Let There
Be Light!" by Abd-ru-shin,
"In the Light of Truth: The Grail
Message".)
As the Apu
Trilogy reaches its conclusion in The World of Apu, we find
Apu disillusioned with what life has brought. He must end his
studies and find employment, which he has little success with. His
only hope is with the novel he is writing about his life. Through a
set of strange twists, he finds himself married to a beautiful
woman. Eventually they do fall in love, which is rapturously caught
by Ray's camera. Apu's wife becomes pregnant, but later dies
giving birth to a baby boy. After years of depression, Apu
returns to the village, where his boy was being raised by his
grandparents. Apu's reconciliation is first and foremost with God,
with nature and the child-like wonderment of his forgotten spirit,
and, only after all of that, comes his reconciliation with his
son.
From a spiritual
viewpoint, Apu's failure to develop himself spiritually has had a
devastating impact on his adulthood. From the film's beginning it is
clear that, after feeding his intellect for so long, Apu's
spirit has withered into a state of dull indolence. He is given an
amazing opportunity to regenerate himself spiritually through the
love of a good woman. Unfortunately, this leads to more
self-complacency, which releases the automatic effects of the Law of
Reciprocal Action, resulting in the death of his beloved
wife.
One can only
shudder at the agony and estrangement that Apu experienced over the
next few years. But at least his sluggish spirit was beginning to
move. In his suffering, the tyranny of the intellect was slowly
losing its grip and, in its place, seeds of an entirely different
nature were beginning to take root in his being. Through a
dramatic shift in his need to reconnect the severed
threads with his young son, Apu in effect rediscovers the path back
to the virtues of his own childhood, further awakening his spirit in
the process. Apu is now on a purer and nobler path than he was
before, which is why, at the end of the film, he can experience
nature in a completely open and child-like state and finally face
head-on the Power of the Light in the form of the sun.
"To fathom what childlike is, you must first
be clear that the childlike is by no means bound up with the child
itself. No doubt you yourselves know children who lack the true
beautiful childlikeness! Thus there are children without
childlikeness! A malicious child will never have a childlike
effect, nor an unruly one who is really ill-bred!
This clearly shows that childlikeness and the child are two
things independent in themselves.
That which is called childlike on earth is a
branch of the effect from out of Purity! Purity in its higher, not merely
earthly-human sense. The human being who lives in the ray of
Divine Purity, who makes room for the ray of Purity within
himself, has thereby also acquired childlikeness, whether it be
still in childhood or already as an adult.
Childlikeness is the result of inner purity,
or the sign that such a human being has submitted to Purity and
serves It. All these are merely different modes of expression, but
in reality they always amount to the same thing.
Thus only a child who is pure within itself,
and an adult who cultivates purity within himself, can have a
childlike effect. That is why he has a refreshing and
vitalising effect, and also inspires confidence!
And wherever there is true purity, genuine
love can also enter, for God's Love works in the ray of Purity.
The ray of Purity is the path It treads. It could not possibly
walk on any other.
The ray of Divine Love can never find its way to him who
has not absorbed the ray of Purity!
Man, however, has deprived himself of
childlikeness by turning away from the Light through his one-sided
intellectual thinking, to which he has sacrificed everything that
might have uplifted him. Thus he has firmly chained himself with a
thousand fetters to this earth, that is, to the World of Gross
Matter, which will hold him in its grip until he liberates himself
from it. This, however, cannot come to him through earthly death,
but only through spiritual awakening. (from "Childlikeness" by Abd-ru-shin,
"In the Light of Truth: The Grail
Message".)
Of course,
the question which should arise within any serious seeker of
Truth, is: Could Apu's path of horrible pain and suffering have been
avoided? Well, we have already noted direct causes for some of
the distortions which lead to his tribulations. But for more
clarity we once again turn to the great Source of Truth and Wisdom, which we have already quoted from liberally in this
article:
"But I say unto you: Only that man who stands
aright in the Creation of his God, who recognises himself as a
part of Creation and lives accordingly, only he is the
true servant of God, no matter in what way he earns his necessary
living on earth. As a part of Creation he will always strive to
adjust himself to those laws that have a furthering effect
therein. Thus he himself furthers Creation, and serves his God in
the only right way. For through the right adjustment only
happiness, joy and further progress can arise!
For this reason he must naturally become familiar
with Creation!
And this is something you badly need - to
recognise the Will of God resting in Creation and its constant
self-acting effects therein! But so far you have never troubled
yourselves to do just this in the correct manner. And yet it is
the same for all of you, namely, that you stand and must move in
the midst of a mighty mechanism, so to speak, without ever being
able to alter or improve upon it.
Unless you stand and move in
it aright, however, danger threatens you from all sides!
You are sure to hit yourselves, and may fall and be torn to
pieces! Exactly as in a gigantic machine-shop, with numerous
driving belts constantly moving in all directions, confusing the
eye and seriously threatening at every step all those not
acquainted with it, but only of real service and use to the
expert! It is no different for man in Creation!
At last learn to understand its
mechanism aright, then you may and shall use it for your own
happiness. But to do this you must first become an apprentice, as
in everything! The greatest of all works, this Creation, is no
exception; the same applies here as with all men's productions.
Even an automobile gives pleasure only to the expert! It brings
death, however, to him who does not know how to control it!
(from "Servants of God" by Abd-ru-shin,
"In the Light of Truth: The Grail
Message".)
With it's honest,
searching portrayal of the difficult life of an ordinary man,
Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy represents one of the greatest means for
identifying mankind's worst enemy (the over-cultivated intellect)
and the way back to the life of the spirit. There are many other
spiritual lessons that can be gleamed from Ray's other early films,
especially the masterpiece Devi ("The Goddess"),
where the downfall of womanhood and the dangers of idolatry and
blind vanity are beautifully exemplified in the story of Doyamoyee,
a young woman, whose life radically changes because of a grave
mistake. Doyamoyee's father-in-law (a local zamindar) has a
dream, in which it is revealed that she is the incarnation of
the goddess Kali. Reluctantly, she permits herself to
be placed on a pedestal for display. But when she then proceeds
to cure a sick child, this "miraculous" event convinces
everyone that Doyamoyee is really Kali - even
Doyamoyee herself begins to believe it - and they begin to
venerate her. When her husband, a university-trained
intellectual, finally arrives home, he views
the frenzied circus surrounding his wife with disbelief
and contempt. His rational mind cannot accept the possibility of
such a thing. His arguments, however, fall on deaf ears. Finally,
Doyamoyee is given another opportunity to cure a deathly ill child,
her beloved nephew, Khoka. This time, however, she fails to provide
a cure and Khoka dies. As the film ends, Doyamyee has slipped into a
state of utter madness.
Jalsaghar ("The Music
Room") - perhaps Ray's greatest film - is a pearl of wisdom for
the understanding of the devastating effects of violating the
Spiritual Law of constant Equilibrium. The story concerns Huzur
Biswambhar Roy, a zamindar, who is consumed by his passion for the
great music of his culture. His obsession, which involves the
staging of lavish concerts at his mansion, reaches
such feverishness that he neglects his family and his estate.
After his wife and son die in an accident and he is financially
ruined, Roy becomes embroiled in a game of
one-upmanship with his nouveau-riche neighbor, which robs
him of his final chance to turn his life around. The ending is
reminiscent of Citizen Kane as we see a broken, regretful man
surveying the haunted ruins of his life. Roy's final "ride of death"
upon a white mare across the beach, his subsequent fall and the
closing panning shot of the riderless mare now peacefully
grazing, an empty ruin of a boat, Roy's white mantle lying on
the beach, a long shot of the ocean and a final cut to a
dispossessed chandelier from Roy's estate swinging in the
darkness: all of this poetically underscores the
inevitability of Roy's self-imposed fate. Incredible filmmaking
from an authentic genius of world cinema.
FURTHER
READING:
"FROM INDIA TO THE
TRUTH: Towards a New Knowledge for the Reformation of Indian
Spirituality" by R. M. Duraisamy
presents a collection of essays that address many of the
spiritual questions that arise when considering the various
spiritual teachings of India, e.g. karma, reincarnation and
transmigration, the structure of Creation, pantheism and so on.
This work also addresses many of the spiritual problems facing
Indian communities all over the world, such as marriage, the
family problem, traditional rites and religious rituals, the
occurrence of miracles that are often used as the basis of all
belief, asceticism and brahmacharyas, the spiritual task
of women, and much more. Above all, this work forms but a simple
bridge to a special Source of Knowledge, which latter
contains the answer to every question and in this manner,
"From India to the Truth" unfailingly leads the humble seeker,
who wanders through the myriad paths of India's religions, to
the incorruptible, eternal, Living Truth! "From India
to the Truth" can be ordered here.
The following are
sample chapters from "FROM INDIA TO THE
TRUTH":
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