German filmmaker Wim Wenders was starstruck when he met Satyajit Ray 52 years ago. Now, Indian movie buffs love him
The director tells me that it is the “first day of my life in India, that I expected an eternity, and you are my first interview”. This news should ideally bring me joy, which he has, but I realize now that I cannot ask him for India. I have a list of ready questions, the usual mixture of shots and the unexpected: Have you seen the India bridge? How was the Vada Pao? Have you lost part of your mental health in Mumbai’s relentless traffic? All these questions are not relevant if I am the first person with whom he discusses during his very first day here. Then he launched me a life buoy, to which I cling to Dear Life: A Reep with Satyajit Ray in 1973 in Berlin Film Festival when Ray won the Golden Lion for Ashani Sanket (Distant Thunder), a film on the devastating famine of 1943 of Bengal, said through the eyes of a man of selfish Brahmane and his compassionate wife.
“He had won the Berlin Film Festival with a thunderstorm, and I was very nervous to approach him even when he stood in the festival theater hall, drinking his coffee, ”explains Wenders. “It was very soft with me and took the time to answer all my questions, and I even have a photo to prove it – both in a deep conversation. I can’t find it anywhere now; It is probably in an archive box.
The conversation focused on Ray’s films, especially the way he used light and music as characters. Wenders had seen most of his films at the Cinémathèque française Pariswhere he moved in 1966 with dreams of becoming a painter. Instead, he ended up spending countless obsessive hours at the Cinémathèque, sometimes watching more than four films per day, every day, immersing himself in the works of authors like Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Howard Hawks and Ray. Some of the Indian films he saw had subtitles in “funky” languages that he could never understand.
