45 Years is among the barest, most harrowing films any pair of lovers can see. Kicking off the events of the film is the 45th anniversary of married couple Kate and Geoff Mercer, and what occurs on the eve of that celebration. Geoff, played by Tom Courtenay in his career-best, is shocked by an unsettling news the body of Katya, an ex-lover, has been discovered in a melted glacier in the Swiss Alps, where she had fallen in over five decades ago when on a trip with the young Mercer. Playing his wife, Kate, is cinema-great Charlotte Rampling, who firms the film in her hands. Constantine s original 2001 short story, inspired by true and personal events, first appeared in the British magazine,
Amitabha Bhattacharya
Former Bureaucrat
THE birth centenary of Satyajit Ray (1921-1992) is an occasion to reflect on his creative output, mainly in cinema, as also in literature and related art forms. So far, the response has largely been unalloyed admiration in Bengali-speaking areas, and a respectful indifference in the rest of India, except among filmmakers and cinema enthusiasts. In the West, respect for Ray remained undimmed, but acclaim started waning for his later films. All this can be partially explained through the myths and images associated with the Ray phenomenon.
The first myth is that his films deal with poverty, perpetuated by Nargis Dutt’s puerile remark in Parliament in 1980, accusing Ray ‘of distorting India’s image abroad’. Ray’s biographer Andrew Robinson quotes her from an interview, “Ray portrays a region… which is so poor that it does not represent India’s poverty in its true form , that people abroad want to see India in an abject conditio
Satyajit Ray the creative genius
×
On his birth centenary, a tribute to the maestro who was much more than a renowned film-maker
In addition to being recognised as one of the all-time great film directors, Satyajit Ray was arguably one of the most versatile creative geniuses of Bengal, if not India, in modern times.
He received many coveted awards like the Bharat Ratna, Honorary Oscar (for lifetime achievement), Legion d’ Honor (the highest civilian award in France) and the Kurosawa Award (for lifetime achievement as a film director), apart from numerous others at international film festivals. Kurosawa, one of the greatest film makers, made the remark that a person who has not watched a Ray movie is like one not knowing the sun and the moon.