Describing Aranyer Din Ratri as the story of a playful encounter between four young men and three young women, the Cannes writeup on the film called it free-spirited and radiant in its appeal. Based on Sunil Gangopadhyay’s novel of the same name, Ray turns it into a portrait of the bourgeoisie Indian youth of the times and a peep into the class, gender and urban-rural dynamics, differences and divides.Tagore calls the four male protagonists of Aranyer Din Ratri, “victims of cultural imperialism”. “The four boys [Asim played by Soumitra Chatterjee, Subhendu Chatterjee as Sanjoy, Samit Bhanja as Hari and Rabi Ghosh as Sekhar] go for a vacation [to Palamu] to get away from it all… They are too caught up. Without the trope of Western cinema, they can’t appreciate nature. They don’t have the words to explain it. They are out of place in nature, amid the grace of the local santhal tribal people,” says Tagore.A nonchalance that could also hold true for youngsters today, inhabiting a world that is all about instant gratification, selfie culture and compulsion to constantly click photographs. “In the process, they lose out on looking and absorbing a place. They need to spend time drinking it all in. Perhaps write a diary to make memories. But with the telephone in hand, it has become all about the instant. They don’t go to the depths, they are short of time,” she says.Posited against the arrogance, callousness and entitlement of the Aranyer men are three women who hold a mirror up to them—the elegant, intelligent and self-possessed Aparna, played by Tagore, the feral tribal Duli (Simi Garewal) and the daring Jaya (Kaberi Bose), Aparna’s widowed sister-in-law.
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