Using the Syd Field lens on Ray
I’ve always wondered how characters are built.
Not acted. Not directed. Written.
What makes a character feel solid—like they existed before the film began and will continue after it ends? Recently, while reading Syd Field on screenwriting, I found myself wanting to test his ideas on a filmmaker I trust implicitly: Satyajit Ray.
Could I take a Ray character and view him through this lens?
Seemabaddha (Company Limited) felt like the perfect test case. Shyamalendu Chatterjee isn’t flamboyant, tragic, or outwardly dramatic. Yet he stays with you. Which usually means the writing is doing something quietly powerful.
Field talks about character in fairly simple terms. I’m expanding them a bit here—past, present, future, and then four basic pillars of character construction—to see how Ray builds Shyamal so effortlessly that you don’t notice the scaffolding at all.
Past, Present, Future: Giving a Character a Life
The Past: He Tells Us Who He Thinks He Is
Ray opens Seemabaddha with Shyamal’s voice, not his actions. That choice matters.
The voice-over gives us his past—education, ambition, how he’s arrived here. But more than facts, what we’re really hearing is self-belief. This is Shyamal narrating his own success story. He sounds assured, composed, faintly proud. There’s no trauma, no apology, no doubt.
Ray isn’t saying, this is who Shyamal is.
He’s saying, this is who Shyamal believes he is.
And that distinction becomes crucial later.
The Present: Work, Home, and the Same Man Everywhere
The present is the film itself—but Ray makes sure it isn’t confined to the office.
At work, Shyamal is efficient, articulate, respected. He knows the language of power. Promotions don’t fall into his lap, but he understands how the game is played. The labour unrest, the stalled advancement, the expectations of foreign bosses—all of it creates pressure.
What Ray never does is trap Shyamal. No one forces his hand. Every decision is chosen, reasoned, justified.
And then Ray takes us home.
Shyamal’s peronal and private life mirrors his professional one. His marriage isn’t cruel, but it isn’t intimate either. Conversations are orderly. Emotions are managed. Even domestic space feels like an extension of the office—clean, controlled, efficient.
What’s striking is that Shyamal never seems to switch off. There is no relaxed version of him waiting behind closed doors. This isn’t a mask. This is the man.
Enter Tutul.
With her, the boundary between public and private collapses. Tutul asks questions Shyamal doesn’t like answering. She observes without admiration. Around her, he isn’t just defending a professional decision—he’s defending an entire worldview.
The strike, we realise, isn’t just about a promotion. It’s about maintaining control everywhere.
The Future: Ray Hands It Over to Us
Ray refuses to tell us what happens next.
There’s no dramatic punishment. No moral reckoning. No redemptive arc. The film ends, and Shyamal continues—somewhere beyond the frame.
And that feels absolutely right.
People like Shyamal don’t usually implode. They persist. They rise. Or they hollow out slowly. Ray’s refusal to conclude his future is an act of confidence. He trusts the audience to finish the thought.
The Four Pillars of Character
1. Dramatic Need: Reach The Apex.
Shyamal’s dramatic need is simple and relentless: he wants to move up.
Not spiritually. Not emotionally. Structurally.
He wants the promotion, the approval, the nod from power. And more than that—he wants to win. To outplay, outlast, out-position everyone else. Ethics are flexible. Collateral damage is acceptable.
This hunger isn’t hidden. Ray doesn’t dress it up as responsibility or destiny. Shyamal wants advancement, and he wants it cleanly recorded in the hierarchy.
That clarity gives the character force. Even when his choices disturb us, they make sense to him. And that’s enough to make them dangerous.
2. Point of View: The World Is a System to Be Managed
Shyamal sees the world as an organisation chart.
People are resources. Problems are inefficiencies. Morality is contextual. From his point of view, what he does during the strike isn’t unethical—it’s necessary. Rational. Sensible.
Ray never lets us dismiss this worldview as cartoonish villainy. Shyamal isn’t malicious. He’s practical. And that’s far more unsettling.
3. Attitude: I Want It All
Shyamal’s attitude isn’t just cold professionalism. It’s total commitment to victory.
He will go to any length—as long as it looks civil.
This attitude doesn’t stop at work. There’s a strong sense that Shyamal doesn’t just want professional dominance; he wants possession. Control. Even Tutul begins to feel like something he wants to win over—not romantically, but ideologically. He wants her approval, her alignment, her quiet acceptance.
Ray never turns this into overt predation. That would be too obvious. Instead, he keeps it polite, deniable, respectable. Which makes it creepier.
Winning, for Shyamal, isn’t about pleasure. It’s about validation. About proving—to others and to himself—that his way of living is correct.
4. Transformation: Not Change, but Exposure
Shyamal doesn’t transform in the conventional sense. He doesn’t learn. He doesn’t repent.
What changes is our clarity.
By the end of the film, Ray hasn’t altered Shyamal. He’s simply removed the filters. The decisions Shyamal makes aren’t deviations—they’re logical conclusions of everything we already know about him.
Some characters grow.
Some characters reveal.
Shyamal does the latter.
Why This Works
You can like Shyamal. You can hate him. You can feel deeply uncomfortable recognising his logic in corporate boardrooms—or in quieter places closer to home.
But you can’t feel nothing.
And that’s the real test.
If a character provokes a strong emotional response without speeches, melodrama, or authorial judgement, the writer has done his job. Ray doesn’t explain Shyamal to us. He lets him operate.
Which is why Seemabaddha still feels disturbingly current. Shyamalendu Chatterjee hasn’t aged. He’s just been promoted.
And that, perhaps, is Ray’s final, sharpest line—spoken without words.
Comments