India
4.5*
Director:
Satyajit Ray
Screenwriter:
Satyajit Ray
Director of Photography:
Subrata Mitra
Running time: 113 minutes
Original title: অপরাজিত
Alternate title: The Unvanquished
This review is part of a series on the Apu Trilogy that also includes:
– Pather Panchali
– The World of Apu
With a tighter focus on Apu, the trilogy’s main character, and his mother Sarbajaya, the second film, Aparajito, substitutes the episodic nature of the first film, Pather Panchali, with a strong narrative that is a journey full of love and loss, presented in an unforgettably cinematic way that takes the best of Eisenstein and uses his approach in a new context without the film ever seeming self-indulgent.
Watching this film in sequence provokes the same kind of emotions I had when I first saw the series of Antoine Doinel films years ago: One feels privileged to watch a character grow in this way, for it is a kind of divine perspective, and it is the medium of film that enables us to appreciate this possibility.
In Aparajito, based on two novels by Bengali writer Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, we meet the young Apu and his parents in Varanasi, where they were headed at the end of the first film. They are still living from hand to mouth, but Apu has made a few friends, including a boy with whom he speaks English. When Apu’s father falls ill and dies, Apu and his mother move back to the countryside, having only each other to lean on.
But let me dwell on the father’s death for a moment. In a fusion of striking images, potent sitar sounds and a very emotional undercurrent, Ray creates the most stirring five seconds of his first two films, and in cinematic terms I would rate it close to the cut from the match being extinguished to the sun rising on the horizon in Lawrence of Arabia. Here, Apu’s father’s face is in close-up, his mouth open, receiving water from the sacred Ganges. When he loses consciousness, a very audible gasp is heard on the soundtrack. There is a cut to birds leaving a rooftop – literally released from their terrestrial bonds; first from up close and then, in another shot, from farther away – and the metaphor of escape should be fairly obvious. But it is the combination of these three shots, and the addition of the sitar, that brings about a very moving moment that does not inhere in the shots considered separately.
The film is about Apu’s journey towards becoming an adult, and besides the death of his father, there are two very general themes I wish to touch on briefly. The first is his relationship with his mother, who has already endured the loss of her daughter and now, of her husband as well. She has little hope of living a prosperous life and wants to hold onto her son as long as possible, but then, in the countryside, there is a major turning point in Apu’s life that would forever change the trajectory of his story: He catches sight of a school and decides that he wants to enrol there.
What follows is a sequence of events that deal with the second theme – Apu’s education – and demonstrate Apu’s aptitude for learning. We quickly become caught up in his progress at school, which includes very clearly defined snippets of schooling; this sequence culminates with a scene at the headmaster’s office, where Apu, now all grown up and about to leave school, is informed that he has received a scholarship to study at university in Calcutta.
One can feel the heartache of the mother, but one can also comprehend Apu’s position, and Ray does not choose sides: Rather, he presents both characters in all their human complexity. In one instance, a shot of Apu’s mother, sitting under a tree, desperately waiting for her son to come visit her, is intercut with a shot of Apu lying leisurely under a tree in Calcutta, studying for his exams. This is life, and people have their reasons and seen from the outside it might seem tragic, but we fully understand how the situation has come to this.
As in the first film, Apu is introduced in a very significant manner, his big black eyes immediately captivating our attention when he peers around a wall in Calcutta, playing hide-and-seek with a friend. As a young man, he seems to be responsible and quite shy, but his intelligence and desire to learn create expectations that the last film, The World of Apu will challenge – and make us realise once more that stories don’t always work out the way we expect. On the contrary, they have a mind of their own.