Movie Masterworks

“Whatever God does is for the best.”

Synopsis: One of the greatest directors of modern cinema, Satyajit Ray became an instant success with his debut film, PATHER PANCHALI (Song of the Little Road). The first Indian film to ever become a hit in the West, PATHER PANCHALI is the moving story of a rural family cursed with bad luck. Father Hari is a dreamer and poet, while his hard-working wife struggles to feed the family. But Durga, a free-spirited and petty thief, brings tragedy to the family in a moment’s carelessness. Awarded many prizes at film festivals all over the world, PATHER PANCHALI catapulted Satyajit Ray to international acclaim and launched one of the cinema’s most distinguished careers. Pather Panchali is part of the Apu Trilogy, along with Aparajito and The World of Apu.

Critique: Imagine for a moment that a twenty-nine year old commercial artist living in Calcutta decides out of the blue that he’d like to make a movie based on a complex multi-volume novel. He has no money, no connections, and few resources of any kind. He teams up with a still photographer who has never previously operated a motion picture camera. They borrow a 16 mm motion picture camera. They choose a bunch of children with no acting experience without so much as conducting screen tests. For one of the adult leads, they find an eighty year-old hunched-over wreck of a woman who had done some acting decades earlier but who is presently living in a brothel. (She initially thinks they’ve come looking for sexual services!) They enlist the services of an unknown solo musician to provide the musical score. The script involves precious little in the way of a plot, providing instead mainly a stark portrayal of abject poverty. Two of the five main characters die over the course of the film. How would you rate the chances of success for such a project? I know . . . not good! Now, consider that the resultant film went on to win the top prize at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in 1956. It revolutionized filmmaking in its country of origin – India. It has impacted many filmmakers throughout the world by its intimate and poetic portrayal of the simplicities of daily living. It is widely regarded by filmmakers and critics as an unqualified masterpiece.

Pather Panchali accomplishes something that great films achieve: it finds the core of universal truths and human feelings while telling its plaintive tale in a culturally specific context. This film captures what appears to me, as an outsider, to be the essence of life in India. It is about the struggles and deprivations related to poverty and death of loved ones.

-Metalluk

My thoughts: Have you ever noticed some photographs are more powerful in Black & White? The cinematography in Pather Panchali is of that quality. Images ingrained in my memory are of children playing in a downpour and a distant train chugging across a field of wheat.