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Two
of Apu;
or,
who cares about World Cinema?
Pather
Panchali
Full
Details
Aparajito
Full
Details
viewed August 27, 2000
at Film Forum
At last. After discouraging experiences with
illegibly-subtitled videotapes, I finally had the
opportunity to watch Pather Panchali on the big
screen with letters clear as day on the bottom.
This was part of the Film Forum's month-long series
called The Golden Age of Foreign Cinema, covering
foreign films from 1950-1970. Whether this
appellation is a little too presumptuous is a matter of
opinion, but if anything it's a clever way to get people
to watch old movies. Even under this marketing big
top, the films of Satyajit Ray are sadly underserved,
for the simple reason that he comes from India, a
country that is underrecognized by American audiences as
the filmmaking powerhouse it is (they make more movies
per year than any other country). Or at least that
was what I thought until I wandered into a packed house
for Pather Panchali, Ray's initial installment to
his acclaimed Apu Trilogy.
Pather Panchali is the father of all coming-of-age
movies, a more obvious example of its progeny would be Hou Hsiao-Hsien's
A Time to Live
and a Time to Die. It is episodic but
never boring, because it establishes early on the
conflicts that will continually lurk in the background
of all events to follow, until calamity finally
strikes. Little Apu is born to a humble rural
family led by a carefree aspiring poet and his
incessantly worrying wife. The household scrapes
by on the father's occasional writing and bookkeeping
jobs, while the neighbors are increasingly impatient
with debts the family owes them. In the midst of
this Apu and his older sister manage to maintain a
carefree childhood, restlessly exploring the tiny world
around them.
That spirit of ceaseless curiosity is what I took
most from this film. There's something about the
way Ray photographs objects that captures a feeling,
whether it is fear or wonder, anxiety or delight.
Whether it is bugs skimming on a lake's surface, a girl
twirling her body in a rain storm, or a snake creeping
through the front door of a house, each image is
memorable for its energy and symbolic meaning. It
is the joy in the life of "small things" to
paraphrase a book by a contemporary Indian author, that
is the joy of this film.
Less carefully crafted but just as moving is the
second installment, in which the family moves to the
city following the disaster that closed Pather
Panchali. This chapter touched me deeply on a
personal level since it played on experiences and fears
that I shared with Apu at this stage of his life:
defying the localized role planned for him by his
family, in order to search of something more -- to be a
part of the world at large. The greatest joy in Aparajito
is watching the blossoming of a charming, playful boy
into an inquisitive, energetic (albeit somewhat spoiled)
student, full of questions about how things work and why
things are. At the same time this glee is
counterbalanced by a growing consternation in his
mother, and we gradually realize the implications of
Apu's development -- soon his studies will take him away
from her, and she will have nothing left but to count
the days until he returns.
Although this film is more expositional and less
leisurely meditative than the first, the driving
narrative is what also generates the powerful force of
fate that drives through the film. Before we know
it, Apu has become a man, and in the brilliant ending
makes a decision of remorseless maturity that draws
silent, tearful cheers in the hearts of the
audience.
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