‘Aranyer Din Ratri’, Satyajit Ray’s exploration of urban-rural divide, draws moving tributes from Wes Anderson, Sharmila Tagore and Simi Garewal at the Cannes Classics section
One of the most understated yet well-attended sections at the Cannes Film Festival is Cannes Classics where legendary old films — brought back to life through digital restoration with crisp image and sound quality — are screened. Indian classics, made by auteurs from Satyajit Ray to Shyam Benegal to Govindan Aravindan, have found a place in the section almost every year in recent times.
The festival’s selection this year included Indian cinematic royalty Satyajit Ray’s Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest, 1970). Watching a restored Satyajit Ray film is nothing short of attending a masterclass in visual storytelling. In a well-attended screening that included film studies students, enthusiasts, and professionals from around the world, the Ray classic — which lifts the lid on the privilege of urbanism when it collides with the realities of rural poverty — mesmerized the audience. Long queues snaked outside the theatre, with an equal number of last-minute attendees without tickets hoping to find a free seat in the auditorium.
Remembering Ray
Part of the draw may also have been Wes Anderson, who introduced the film with a moving speech about how he was inspired by Ray’s work as a boy growing up in New Jersey. The memory game sequence in Aranyer Din Ratri was the direct inspiration for a similar scene in Anderson’s 2023 sci-fi film, Asteroid City. But the fact that the film captivated a predominantly young audience is proof of Ray’s enduring relevance to today’s film enthusiasts and moviegoers. “The characters pass through the film in a sort of psychological midsummer night’s spell. Aranyer Din Ratri is one of the special gems among his many treasures,” Anderson said.
Satyajit Ray. Photo courtesy of Cannes Film Festival (Nemai Ghosh collection).
Sharmila Tagore and Simi Garewal eloquently recalled their experience working with Ray 50 years ago and left no doubt about the impact working with Ray had on their careers and life. “I came to Cannes only to attend the screening of this film,” said Tagore. “Only the two of us — Tagore and Garewal — who were part of the movie survive. It’s an opportunity for me to see my friends again in this film,” Tagore added.
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An emotional Simi Garewal recalled Ray mentioning in one of his letters to her years later in his life that the memories of making the film still lingered in his mind. “Films fade, as do memories but efforts like these will ensure the younger generation get an opportunity to experience and appreciate Ray’s great cinema,” she added.
Clash between urban and rural reality
In Aranyer Din Ratri, adapted from the eponymous novel by Sunil Gangopadhyay, four friends travel to the tribal hinterlands of Bihar. They step out of their urban lives for a kind of lost weekend, and what ensues is a negotiation between the urban and the rural — a tale of selfish men oblivious to the damage they cause, and the women who see through them.
Simi Garewal as a tribal girl in Aranyer Din Ratri.
The friends strong-arm a forest guesthouse chowkidar into renting them rooms without the prior written approval legally required, openly ogle tribal women, and befriend another urban family they encounter in the forest. Days and nights are spent indulging in silly shenanigans — semi-naked baths at the well, aimless jungle wanderings, getting punch-drunk at night, and causing a ruckus in the quiet of the woods. All the while, the hardships of the local tribals, who live with bare minimum necessities, remain invisible to the self-involved friends. They command the chowkidar’s ailing wife to cook for them and are quick to accuse a tribal man of stealing a misplaced wallet — which later turns up anyway.
Ray makes viewers complicit
In Ray’s expert hands, the viewer becomes complicit; the men are not drawn as one-note monsters but as complex and relatable characters who could easily be your own friends. By inviting us to laugh at the tomfoolery of the four friends — without realising, at first, that they are trampling upon the basic humanity of the underprivileged — Ray perhaps sought to expose the subconscious biases we all carry. Slowly, the rug is pulled from under us, as the friends are made to introspect, their hypocrisy and privilege laid bare by Sharmila Tagore’s Aparna.
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Prescient in its exploration of social inequalities, Aranyer Din Ratri stands up to scrutiny even today — perhaps one reason Ray is so often lauded as a storyteller uniquely capable of probing the layers of human psyche, exposing its fault lines, and doing so with timeless grace. His films suggest that only by embracing humanity in its entirety can one truly depict the fissures that ravage society.
This restoration was made possible by Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project. The work was executed by the Film Heritage Foundation, which had previously restored films like Shyam Benegal’s Manthan, Govindan Aravindan’s Thamp, and Aribam Syam Sharma’s Ishanou — all of which premiered at Cannes in recent years. The digitally restored version of Aranyer Din Ratri will receive a limited theatrical release in India at a later date.
The film ends on a bittersweet note, though we may never know whether the trip truly altered the friends’ worldview or left even a dent in their bourgeois urban sensibilities in any manner. The ambiguity of the ending allows the film to linger — it is designed to subtly provoke and spark conversation. “Ray’s films are so clearly the personal projects of a maestro. He was sort of a heroic artist — that’s the way I always felt about him,” said Anderson. We can all agree.
