Pather Panchali [VHS] [1955]

In a moment of almost hallucinatory beauty, the two leave their village in search of the framilies lost calf, into fields of long grass, past new electricity pylons that tower miraculously above them after the cluastrophobic containmnet of the village world, and eventually to the railway tracks they have never before seen, even though the sound of the train can be heard from their village. As a stream train roars past, the viewer for a moment is transported to that point of wonder and awe, romaticised as the child's view, which we so often yearn for.

Throughout the film, senses are sharpened and refreshed; the sound of feet walking on the village's mud paths, of rain falling on the roof of the dilapidated house, the taste of guavas stolen from an orchard that used to belong to your own family:
the accumulation of so much sensuous beauty leaves the soul brimming and the heart with a new thirst for life.

The two things I knew about this classic Indian film before I watched it was that it was the first by director Satyajit Ray and the first in the Apu trilogy. I found the later more interesting because Apu (Subir Bannerjee) is arguable the least significant of the major characters in this film, which centers more on his mother, Sarbojaya (Karuna Bannerjee), and especially his sister, Durga (Uma Das Gupta). Durga is something of a petty theft, who is always stealing fruit from the neighborhood orchards. Her mother defends her behavior to the neighbors, pointing out that fruit does not have the name of its owner on it, but she does not know what to do about Durga, or about the family's old auntie (Chunibala Devi). Apu is a witness to some of what happens, but it is not until the end of the film that he has a scene of some importance. Even then, it is the poetry of the moment that matters more than anything Apu does, and you are left with a sense of wonder as to how Ray has crafted this film so that this relatively simple moment becomes so eloquent.

"Pather Panchali" was also known as "The Lament of the Path," "The Saga of the Road," and "Song of the Road," all of which give you a sense of the meaning and import of the title. You would be hard pressed to describe the plot of this movie in terms that would be enticing to an audience that is going to have to sit down and read subtitles for a film, but there are so many memorable moments in this film without dialogue, that being forced to read the English subtitles of the Bengali dialogue seems a small price to pay. This is about a poor rural family cursed with bad luck, and even that minor description gives no indication of the scope of this film. Even when nothing is happening, the scenes are still filled with meaning, and we never shake the feeling that we are watching real life.

After seeing this film I started reading up on Ray and the legendary story of how he made this film, it is rather unbelievable when you consider we are talking about one of the greatest "foreign" film directors of all time, right up there with Kurosawa, Bergman, and Fellini. The short version is Ray had never directed a scene, his cameraman (Subrata Mitra) was a still photographer who had never shot a film, and his young actors had been hired without tryouts. He also hired a young musician named Ravi Shankar to do the score, and the result was cinematic magic and a film debut that is unforgettable. "Pather Panchali" is followed by "Aparajito" (1957) and "Apur Sansar" (1959) in telling the rest of the story of young Apu as he grows up. I have not seen then yet, but of course I will. I just need to let the afterglow of having finally seen this film dissipate first before I move on to the next offering in the trilogy.