Pather Panchali
Screened: 20th November 2003
India 1955 (subtitles)
Directed by Satyajit Ray
Leading players ~ Kanu Bannerjee, Karuna Bannerjee, Subir Bannerjee.
Synopsis
Harihar (Kanu Bannerjee) should have been a scholar priest. But he is husband to Sarbojaya (Karuna Bannerjee) and father to his son Apu (Subir Bannerjee) and daughter Durga. The family is heavily in debt, a situation not helped by their live-in aged aunt, Chunibala. Based on a popular children’s book that Ray had illustrated, we are carefully led through the dreams, aspirations and antagonisms in the daily lives of three generations who live and die together. The film progresses through a carefully paced series of everyday events that take place in a spectacular rural landscape of frugality, mango trees, monsoons and which are intermittently driven by the aspirational pull of industrial and urban promise, symbolised by the thundering traffic of the nearby railway line.* * * * * *
This film has become recognised as a legendary debut in the history of the cinema. Ray’s intimate treatment of subject and aesthetics places his work as far from Bollywood as you can get. Filmed on a low budget and with inexperienced crew, the result remains fresh and inspired, showing off Ray’s neo-realist influences and poetic symbolism. Legendary film, legendary film-maker. Not to be missed.
