Revisiting Realism Through Satyajit Ray’s The Inner Eye 1 Wide Screen, Vol 4, No.1. ISSN: 1757-3920 Published by Subaltern Media, 2012 Journal Title: Wide Screen Vol. 4, No.1, December 2012 ISSN: 1757-3920 URL: http://widescreenjournal.org Published by Subaltern Media, 153 Sandringham Drive, Leeds LS17 8DQ, UK ‘FAMILIAR TYPES, FAMILIAR GESTURES’: REVISITING REALISM THROUGH SATYAJIT RAY’S THE INNER EYE ANINDYA SENGUPTA ______________________________________________________________________________ Abstract: This article attempts to rethink the realist mode adapted by Satyajit Ray in his cinematic works by trying to posit its chief features vis-à-vis the history of fine arts in Bengal. While Ray’s realism has been connected to diverse styles like Classic al Hollywood Cinema, Jean Renoir’s realism and Italian Neorealism and has been assoc iated with the literary realism of Bengal more readily, his aesthetic has been rarely studied in relation to the fine arts practiced at Santiniketan, where he stayed during his formative years since 1940s. This essay takes his 1972 documentary—The Inner Eye— portraying Benodebehari Mukhopadhay (1904-80), his teacher at Santiniketan, as an exemplary text and claims that this short film collaterally presents the discursive terrain o f Ray’s own aesthetics too, with the director situating himself in a well- defined trajectory of artistic engagement with proximate reality via his mentor’s art. Looking back from this vantage point, the essay tries to show how Mukhopadhyay’s aesthetic can be located as a conscious shift from the preceding nationalist-spiritual ethos of the ‘Bengal School’ of art which again defined itself as distanced from Raja Ravi Varma’s brand of ‘surrogate realism’. Modes of engaging with, or dissociating from, the phenomenal real have been the moot point at every point of these departures. The essay also tries to read Benodebehari’s writings on Abanindranath Tagore and Nandalal Bose to understand how he elaborates his own aesthetic ground via an appraisal of his predece ssors’ practice and pedagogy, the method Satyajit Ray follows in his documentary. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The correspondence between Bengali literature and Satyajit Ray’s cinematic realism has been acknowledged and much commented upon, but the relationship with the prevalent visual culture in Bengal in general and fine arts in particular, is not explored as such. In this essay, I