India
4*
Director:
Satyajit Ray
Screenwriter:
Satyajit Ray
Director of Photography:
Subrata Mitra
Running time: 115 minutes
Original title: পথের পাঁচালী
This review is part of a series on the Apu Trilogy that also includes:
– Aparajito
– The World of Apu
This has to be one of the best debut films ever shot. Based on a Bengali novel by writer Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay (try saying that three times in a row), it was adapted for the screen and directed by Satyajit Ray, a man in his early thirties who had had no formal training in film making, but who had a passion for cinema and had founded the Calcutta Film Club in 1947. The other crew members were equally inexperienced, and Ray’s director of photography, Subrata Mitra, had barely turned 21. Many of the actors, including the young boy, Apu, hadn’t acted before either.
This was the start of the Indian New Wave, also known under the moniker “Parallel Cinema”, because the films were being produced in India as an alternative to their better known musicals. Similar in kind to the social realist Italian New Wave of the time, it also came about in part thanks to Ray’s involvement in Jean Renoir’s The River, released in 1951, for which Ray had met with Renoir and assisted during the shoot.
But Pather Panchali is much more gritty than the superproduction that was Renoir’s film, and it has certainly dated much better, primarily because the acting is more sincere and it does not contain any heavy-handed narration. The film is the first instalment in a series that would later be known as the “Apu Trilogy”, after the main character, whose life as a boy is portrayed in the first film; in the second film, Aparajito, we see him as a young man; and in the third film, The World of Apu, he has grown up and has to take responsibility for his choices earlier in life.
Pather Panchali seems like a very rough-and-tumble film, with little going for it as far as the plot is concerned, but the film’s memorable characters are all introduced very early in the film in such a way that we are immediately attached to them. The setting is equally difficult to pinpoint: We see crumbling houses in a big forest and an open field with tall grass that leads to the railway tracks, but that is the extent of the locations. And yet, it is enough: Ray finds beauty in everyday objects and has a very acute sensibility for composition that ensures our interest in the visuals as well as the narrative.
In one of the film’s most strikingly beautiful shots, we see Apu and his sister Durga following the sweet-seller. The camera shoots their reflections in the shallow pond next to them, as their movements are accompanied, as is so often the case, by the sitar music of Ravi Shankar. His music is used repeatedly throughout the film and the only time that it seems strained is during the scene when a parent finds out that his daughter has died.
While the film is clearly the beginning of a journey for young Apu, whose big, black curious eyes are impossible to overlook, almost all of the characters have something unique by which we can identify them and that serves the narrative in a very powerful way. The train is also a symbol that is hard to miss and it is interesting to note the scenes in which a train can be heard in the distance: at night, when Apu’s father mentions his desire to write and sell plays, and when his wife discusses her wish to move out of his ancestral home and let them settle in Benares (Varanasi). For the moment, these desires are unfulfilled, but as the seasons change, people’s eyes open to the possibilities that are available to them, and Apu’s eternally optimist father has to make up his mind about the way forward.
Speaking of eyes – another shot that will make an impression on the viewer is the introduction of Apu. Unlike the other characters, who simply appear in a shot, Apu is clearly introduced: His sister pulls open his eyelid through a hole in the cloth covering his face and when his eye is suddenly visible, this image, framed by the cloth around his eye, receives backing on the soundtrack with loud sitar music.
The entire family of characters, including the slightly senile grandmother, is a wonderful mix of people who cope as best they can with their abject poverty, and the small scenes that Ray has strung together form a very colourful impression that will stay with the viewer for a long time after the credits roll.