A Beginning of Numerous Journeys....

Pather Panchali(1955)

Directed by : Satyajit Ray
Produced by: The Government of West Bengal
Starring:
Kanu Banerjee
Karuna Banerjee
Chunibala Devi
Uma Dasgupta
Subir Banerjee
Music by : Ravi Shankar
Cinematography: Subrata Mitra
Based on the Novel " Pather Panchali" by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay



Fresh from having assisted Jean Renoir in the filming of "The River", and deeply moved by De Sica's "The Bicycle Thief", a young Satyajit Ray was convinced that movie-making was his truest calling. Thus he went on , through various budgeting disasters,and working with an almost entirely inexperienced crew, to craft what many people,critics or not, consider to be the greatest Indian movie ever made.

The backdrop for this rural Indian saga is ,you guessed it, a pre- independence village in Bengal, where we follow the everyday lives of the priest, Harihar, and his family. Family is his wife Sharbojaya, two children,daughter Durga and son Apu(the protagonist of the trilogy), and Harihar's widowed aunt, Indir Thakrun, whose stay with them is more or less an act of charity on the part of Sharbojaya.We witness how Durga has something of a tomboyish streak, and how the neighbors misinterpret her stealing fruits from trees to be something done out of need rather than childishness. We see how Harihar struggles to find work in a profession which faced something of a saturation back then.We see how Sharbojaya is gardually getting frustrated with her domestic life, and how she vents that frustration on Durga ,and Indir Thakrun at various points of time.
We see a little girl and her even littler brother following the "mishti waala" with nothing but optimism on them, maybe thinking "what if he gives us some out of sheer generosity?" We see a man, well aware of the fact that he's not able to fulfill his duties towards his family, masking his disappointment with false hopes, which , at some point of time, he himself begins to believe in.We see the old widow, unwanted, unappreciated, the world treating her with indifference to the extent that death seems like a welcome release for her. We see tragedy strike people whose very existence is burden enough for them. But at the end of it all, we se the human spirit and it's uncanny nature to emerge stronger out of despair and shit-storms.

Now on to the technical aspects of this masterpiece. I'll be bold enough to claim that this movie bests almost anything America or Europe had to offer on that front.The camera work by Subrata Mitra( a frequent collaborator with Ray after this) is nothing short of masterful. The image of the children walking along the river bank, and their reflections in the clear water, is something that has stayed with me. The score for the movie was provided by the then relatively unknown Pt Ravi Shankar,and you know what? That guy has some serious talent!! The actors , especially the child artists, pull off their parts with tremendous professionalism. Special mention has to be made of Chunibala Devi's portrayal of Indir Thakrun, and how precisely she emotes and reacts as someone in that situation would. In fact, it is one of Ray's forte, to clearly understand how a human being would react in a particular situation. It sounds simple enough, but only the greatest of Auteurs possess this understanding. Considering this movie was made on a budget of Rs 1.5 Lakhs, the fact that it is called a techinacal mastrpiece is a tribute to Ray's efficiency as a film-maker.

Now i have absolutely no negative points for this movie. I know it sounds like something of a cop-out, but it's true. This is a perfect movie, and i m yet to see anything, from any country, which bests this champion of Indian neorealism cinema. With this movie, began the journey of a Director who went on to achieve greatness of the sort few else can lay claim to, but im sure even Ray must have looked back at this and patted himself on the back a little,from time to time.