Ray and his alien dreams
If everything had gone as planned, E.T. could have been a Satyajit Ray directorial. More than three decades after Steven Spielberg made history, filmmaker Sandip Ray talks to SOUNAK MUKHOPADHYAY about his father’s truncated dream
Things are hectic as Sandip Ray plans to start the production of his first sci-fi project, Professor Shonku O El Dorado (Professor Shonku And El Dorado) next month. Even before his father created the iconic detective called Feluda, he created Professor Shonku, an extra-ordinary scientist known for his miraculous inventions.
Creating Prof Shonku
Shonku’s inventions include Annihillin (a pistol that vanishes living creatures), Evolutin (a medicine that helps people evolve a 10 thousand years in five minutes) and even an Invisibility Drug that makes people invisible for five hours.
“Nothing of this sort had been done before Baba created Shonku,” Ray remembers his father. “We, as young children at that time, were extremely excited to read something like this in Bengali. Prior to this, what we had was rather translated accounts of Western science fiction stories,” he adds.
Ray and sci-fi
Satyajit Ray had an intense interest in science fiction. Other than Shonku, he wrote several other such stories. Sujoy Ghosh recently made a short film (Anukul) based on Ray’s short story, Onukul. “The very first short story he wrote for children was a sci-fi called Bonkubabur Bondhu,” Ray fondly remembers. “He is celebrated for his detective stories, but he had the touch of fantasy in many of his stories. Shonku was eccentric in the beginning. But, he made the character more sorted later on,” he avers.
According to Sandip Ray, his father had to research a lot for Shonku. There was no Internet those days and had to physically study about the places where he wanted Shonku to visit. “My father asked his friends abroad to send post-cards, maps and other details to learn more about those places,” Ray opines.
The alter egos
Sandip Ray believes both Feluda and Shonku were his father’s alter ego. While Feluda was everything he was, Shonku was what he wanted to be. “Baba took Feluda to places that he went to and loved. But, he took Shonku to places that he wanted to visit, but never could,” Ray says. “Every trait in Shonku’s character, his likes and dislikes direct to just one person: Satyajit Ray,” he adds.
The ordeals
Doesn’t that mean Shonku represents Ray’s unfulfilled ambitions as well? The character was created in the 1960s. But, neither the master himself nor the filmmakers who followed him attempted to make a film on Shonku. “The main reason why Shonku was not made before was the lack of technology required to make a science fiction in Bengali,” Ray, who started his career as an assistant director for Shatranj Ke
Khilari (The Chess Players), says. “Shonku stays in his residence in Giridih just for a while and travels around the world. So, making a film on him required a certain amount of budget and a kind of visual effects that had not been available earlier.”
Dhritiman Chaterji is going to play Professor Shonku in the movie. Bollywood viewers would know him as the judge in Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s Pink; Chaterji debuted as the protagonist in Ray’s Pratidandi. The master filmmaker once called the actor a star who ‘keeps his calm before the camera, projects a personality and evokes empathy’. Nevertheless, there may be another major reason why Ray never tried to make a Shonku movie. The bitter experience he had with his alien project in Hollywood was also responsible for his lack of interest in making a science fiction movie, his son believes. “He thought it would not be possible to make a legitimate sci-fi movie without taking any help from Hollywood. On the other hand, he was apprehensive how much liberty he would have in Hollywood, especially if he worked with big studios,” Ray says.
Tryst with Hollywood
Ray was extremely disappointed after watching Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. “He left a number of mimeographed copies of his project at Columbia’s office,” the 64-year-old filmmaker says. “The project never saw the light of the day. Later on, Columbia went on to make Close Encounters,” he adds.
E.T. turned out to be the fourth-highest-grossing film of all time in Canada and the United States. It established Spielberg as one of the most influential filmmakers in the world. Interestingly, Ray did not make many movies after 1981. He made just four feature films and one documentary in the following 11 years.
Ray's Alien Vs Spielberg’s
But, how similar were Spielberg’s version and Ray’s? “There were uncanny similarities in terms of the healing powers that the alien had. Baba really felt bad after watching the movies,” the son reminisces. “The saddest part is that this was the only complete screenplay penned by my father that was never made into films. He had a number of unfinished scripts, but this one was absolutely complete,” he continues. Yet, Ray’s relation with Hollywood did not end in despair. Ray had no bitter feelings in the years to come. “My father never believed in looking back,” Sandip Ray says, adding, “He went ahead and made other movies.”
Ray was eventually awarded the Oscar for lifetime achievement. According to his son, it made him extremely gratified. The filmmakers who strongly recommended Ray’s name for the award were George Lucas, Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.
Ray in 2018
Many experts believe Ray’s last three movies were his message to the world. Everything he wanted to say about religion, science, politics and society was conveyed via Gawnoshotru, Shaakha Proshaakha and Aagontuk.
One may wonder which subject Ray would have chosen to work on if he made a movie in 2018. “Let’s use a planchette and ask from the man himself,” Sandip Ray quips.
“I have no idea how happy he would have been to know that things have got digital now,” he says. “But, he must have tried a sci-fi. Maybe he would have made Shonku if he was alive now,” he further adds. “You never know. With due modifications, he might have tried that alien movie that he could never make,” Ray concludes.