Pather Panchali (1955)
Country: India
Director: Satyajit Ray
Producer:
Writer: Satyajit Ray
Cast: Kanu Bannerjee, Karuna Bannerjee, Subir Bannerjee
Running Time: 115 Min
Plot: Sometime in the early years of the century, a boy, Apu, is born to a poor Brahmin family in a village in Bengal. The father, a poet and priest, cannot earn enough to keep his family going. Apu’s sister, Durga, is forever stealing mangoes from the neighbour’s orchards. All these add to the daily struggles of the mother’s life, notwithstanding her constant bickering with old aunt who lives with the family.
A deserved classic of world cinema, filmed in mesmerizing sepia-toned monochrome at a pace so glorious and leisurely, you feel as if you are watching life just as it is lived. It’s master filmmaker Satiyajit Ray’s first film, an astonishing harbringer of what was to be decades of great films to come. For this production, a simple story of the poverty-stricken life of a small family in Bengal, Ray focused on the details of everday living, recreating them to perfection. Through Ray’s stare-unwavering, but not supporting or condemning-the littlest events take on a mysterious and powerful significance. As the family’s fortunes turn from bad to worse, these small details take on greater and greater import to the children of the family, most especially to Apu, the young son who observes everything as if he were planning to write a novel about it. Within the next decade, Apu himself would become famous the world over. He became the central character in the director’s two follow-ups, The Unvanquished and The World of Apu. He would be Ray’s most potent symbol through which the great director’s potent humanism would shine through.
Related Posts
About the Author: Vogue Fish
