Continuing my countdown of the last ten of 100 consecutive movie nights.
Pather Panchali (1955), dir. Satyajit Ray, starring Kanu Bannerjee, Karuna Bannerjee, Uma das Gupta, Subir Bannerjee, Chunibala Devi. Music by Ravi Shankar.
This was independent India’s first big film success. It was also the debut of Satyajit Ray, who had never directed a film before and cinematographer Subrata Mitra, a stills photographer who had never operated a film camera before the first day of the shoot. On a shoestring budget and with a novice crew, production proceeded in fits and starts over a three year period. The end result is astonishingly mature in its pacing and storytelling, and the cinematography is stunning. Both Ray and Mitra went on to lengthy successful careers because of the international acclaim the film received.
Based on a popular novel by Indian author Bandyopadhyay, Pather Panchali is set in the early years of the 20th century in a tiny rural village in Bengal, and tells the story of the poor family into which the boy Apu is born. (This film was the first in a trilogy about the life of Apu.) His father is attempting to establish himself as a writer, without success, as the family falls deeper into debt and poverty. When he goes to the city to find work, his wife bears the burden of keeping the family fed, and the hardship becomes extreme. The two children – older sister Durga and little brother Apu – spend their happiest hours roaming through the woods and fields, following the sweets-seller, and attending village fêtes and plays. There is much conflict between the mother and headstrong Durga, and also with the elderly auntie Indir who lives with them. While the mother treats Durga and Indir very harshly, the stress she is under also makes her a sympathetic character.
The original novel had a meandering style and Ray wanted to capture this same quality in his film. As a result the pace is slow and meditative, so you have to be in the proper mood for it, but Shankar’s music is enthralling, the characters are engagingly complex, and the details of daily life are interesting as well. Besides its narrative worth, the film is a valuable document of a traditional way of life about to change forever. The train they can hear at night, off in the distance, is a mystery to the children until they venture one day through forests and fields to see it, in one memorable scene.
Slow and meditative but richly detailed, beautiful and complex, this is a film to calm the soul.
