Seemabaddha (The Company Limited) A Ray classic

revisited
Recently saw Seemabaddha (The Company Limited) again after almost
three and half decades since it was released last. The second of Satyajit
Rays Calcutta trilogy is a psychological interplay of power relationships
in a corporate set up. It has a narrative which is fairly effortless and the
end appears to be poignant, with film closing on a sombre note of a young
executive losing his soul, when his dream of reaching the top he had
aspired all along gets fulfilled. That is the subtle irony in the tale. The film
is almost a poetic saga of a young and upcoming executive's climb up the
path to the top echelons in a multinational company in the then Calcutta
of the late sixties and early seventies, driven by relentless ambition and
his how rise has a terrible cost in terms of ethics and his slow immersion
into corruption, seen through the eyes of his sister-in-law.
Ray explores the shenanigans in the higher rungs of the corporate world,
then British-owned managing agencies, beautifully and in a typical
understated fashion that was his hallmark. With his eye on the details and
even on the minor characters, Ray brings out the inner turmoil and
tensions inherent in the jockeying and positioning for power that makes
Shyamal, the leading male protagonist, once an ideologue and a brilliant
student, adopt unethical means to fulfil his ambitions of becoming the
Company Director, in a tough situation where he had a rival with a relative
on the board. When the life was fine and in a high-lane with a upper-class
lifestyle, with whiskey and race horses, they Shyamal and his wife
invite Tutul, his sister-in-law (Sharmila Tagore in a subtle and understated
role) from Patna to stay with them for a few days, she too gets a glimpse
of the delights of the city life, the cocktail parties, the swanky and
spacious flat in a high-rise apartment. She had been a great admirer of
the idealist Shyamal and in fact secretly envies her sisters marriage with
him. The story was based on the well-known Bengali author, Sankar, and
revolves around Tutul acting as Shyamals conscience.
The life was pretty smooth for this ambitious executive in fan
manufacturing British fan in the then Calcutta till the time it hits a
roadblock, when a huge consignment of fans due for export under his
supervision turns out to be defective, leaving hardly any time to adhere to
the deadline. This places Shyamal's quest for directorship into serious
predicament. In panic and depression, he confides in Tutul, who was an
intelligent observer of things and life that revolved around her bright and
once-an-idealist brother-in-law. When all efforts to find a way of bailing
himself out of the situation fails, in desperation, not to lose his
professional standing, he finally compromises on his ethics and along with
a corrupt labour officer, stages a strike in the factory. A security guard is
seriously injured when a bomb is thrown in those turmoil-filled days of the
early seventies Calcutta, of strikes and lock-outs. In due course of time, of

course, the matter is resolved and the company buys time to arrange
delivery at a later date. Shyamal becomes the director, but he realizes
that in the esteem of Tutul, he has fallen and that is the tragedy. The film
ends on a grim note, and instead of the hero in a triumphant mood as is
normal in such situations, he hides his faces from Tutul and with his head
bowed, the camera fades. A scene reminiscent of Sergei Eisensteins
October, where in a tense and climactic moment, as Kerensky, head of the
provincial government, climbing the stairs, appeared exhausted,
physically and metaphorically, hereto as Shyamal returning home on
being named as a director, finding the lift out of order, starts climbing the
stairs. With each step, he gets weary and tired, again both physically and
metaphorically, and by the time he had reached the seventh floor, his
elation and joy of fulfilling his dreams had vanished. It is here that the
most poignant scene of the film unfolds when Tutul who has painfully
watched the fall of her hero, without uttering a single word, removes the
watch that Shyamal had gifted her on the first day of reaching Calcutta,
signalling her complete disillusionment with the way he had risen to the
top by compromising on the morals. Barun Chanda as Shyamal was just
simply brilliant and Sharmila Tagore, a Ray favourite, comes up with an
understated and nuanced portrayal that only Ray was capable of
extracting from his actors.
In a commemorative issue of Frontline, a collection of some of the most
brilliant writings that appeared in the magazine, Gowri Ramnarayan, the
eminent film critic, had written about Ray in the most glowing terms, in
December 1991, in the following introductory words: Satyajit Ray,
Bengals contribution to cinema, is every bit as important as Rabindranath
Tagore. An awesome figure with worldwide reputation. A traditionalist in
approach. A classicist in control. A humanist in attitude. Known for his
outstanding artistic achievements and for the courage of his convictions,
Rays films are characterised by lyricism and nuanced character depiction
and he remains undoubtedly the finest filmmaker India has produced.
This brilliant piece made me watch Seemabaddha once over again and it
was in every sense a highly rewarding and enriching experience, with
Rays cinematic sensibility and innate aesthetic sense, continuing to hold
his admirers and aficionados in thrall, even two decades after his death.