![]() ![]() And they would have succeeded if not for Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Prime Minister of India. And quite justifiably, as one might say, the film had scores of paranoid and apprehensive critics, mostly government bureaucrats, who tried their very best to shackle the film within the confines of the nation, so that the world would not get to know. A traditional mother of orthodox times trying to cage the free bird in her daughter to mold her to suit for her life with, or more prominently, life under the strict, authoritative eyes of her future in-laws, besides her daily chores, while at the same time, taking great care of her boy-child, who she sees growing up, well-educated, into a civilized man, highlighting the patriarchal condition of the society which is still widely prevalent in the nation, 61 years after this film was set, giving the world a real taste of it. Set in Nischindipur, a fictional hamlet in rural Bengal, ‘Pather Panchali’ is a coming of the age film, narrating the tale of poverty in rural India. A Brahmin priest Harihar, struggling to provide for his family, his wife Sarbajaya, their mischievous daughter Durga and her partner in crime, often unknown of his participation due to his tender age, Durga’s little brother Apu, the aged cousin of Sarbajaya, Indir Thakrun and their tale of indigence, misery, adversity and the power of life emerging through their daily struggle of making ends meet. As the two-line preface at the very beginning would suggest, the story is remarkably simple. If you haven't seen it yet, what are you waiting for?.Yes, we are talking about Satyajit Ray and his début film ‘Pather Panchali’.īased on Bibhutibhusan Bandopadhay’s 1929 novel of the same name, ‘Pather Panchali’, which roughly translates in English to ‘Song of the Little Road’, the film is all about the rainbow of life making its way through the dark and grim clouds of misery, by the appreciation of the gift called life, a privilege and the treasure at the end of the rainbow, treasure, which in words, will never be good enough to do any justice to appreciate this gem. The simple story of the Bengali family will definitely stay in my heart for a long time to come. ![]() Until the closing moments, we don't get a sense of the young boy as a fully formed individual, since he's always in someone else's shadow. Harihar is absent for more than half of the movie, and, before the penultimate scene, Apu is a mere witness to events, rather than a participant. Most of what transpires is shown through the eyes of either Sarbojaya or Durga, and, as a result, we identify most closely with these two. Harihar's family often lives on the edge of poverty, coping with the unkind taunts of their neighbors, the burden of caring for an aging aunt (Chunibala Devi), and the terrible aftermath of a natural catastrophe. The mother, Sarbojaya (Karuna Bannerjee), worries that her husband's financial laxity will leave her without enough food for her two children, daughter Durga (Uma Das Gupta) and son Apu (Subir Bannerjee). The father, Harihar (Kanu Bannerjee), is a priest and poet who cares more about his writing and spiritual welfare than obtaining wages he is owed. It's a quiet, simple tale, centering on the life of a small family living in a rural village in Bengal. In contrast Satyajit Ray completed the trilogy on the behest of the Indian Prime Minister, pointing to the film's cultural impact. Apart from a seventy-year-old woman who made her name in the 1930s on the stage, none of the cast had ever acted before and many had been plucked from the Indian rurality. The film is a serene and beautiful depiction of a little boy's childhood in the Indian countryside in the 1950s.The film was made on a shoestring budget by a hitherto unknown director. Pather Panchali, released in 1955, is the first film of director Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy. The characters are so true to the ethnic rural-sixties Indian existence that one is compelled to wonder if the film was captured through surveillance cameras. The film is overwhelmingly real and the key element in the movie is the maintenance of this realism. ![]()
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