I'm argentinian 🇦🇷 and love India🇮🇳. I was lucky when I had the chance of watching this film with dialoges in Castellano (spanish) spoken here. This is one of best film I've ever seen. It is special one! I remember a little part, when Apur comes to visit his ill mother. He his near the House, he calls his mother... In front of the door is his father, sad. In few seconds, Apu realizes that his mother is dead... He, then, cries, me too! I love this film so much..!
There's a scene in Aparajito where Apu visits his mom after being at the boarding house in Calcutta. She asks him how the food is and he replies it's not bad. Then she asks, "It's not better than mine, is it?" My mom would ask the exact same thing.
A great review! Congratulations! I will differ at some points. 1. The movie is not about the effect of industrialisation on India and its people. It is the opposite. It is about the transition of wide eyed innocence into the silent surrender before the reality of life. It is about Apu's change. 2. The situation has not changed much in these 7 decades. Only that the cultural uniqueness has been fractured by the internet and other media. You are absolutely right about the framing and storyboarding. In fact, his ideas and sketches have been compiled into a very nice book! The essence of Ray's movie is the deep insight into human nature and intercourse. This is so unique, that it can be extrapolated/ transposed over any cultural frame. With love from India Jiten
Akira Kurosawa said of Satyajit Ray that to have never watched his films is like having lived in the world and never having seen the sun rise or set. While the two are often compared for their impact on world cinema, in some ways, Ray may be better compared with another great Japanese director, Yasujiro Ozu, in that both focus on the nature of ordinary relationships between ordinary individuals. Of course, Ray, like every other human being, is more melodramatic than Ozu. The story of Apu overlaps Ozu's "Tokyo Story" in that the relationships between parents and children, between siblings, and the pathos and joys of family are thoroughly explored. One could argue that the central relationship in the Apu Trilogy (particularly "Pather Panchali" ("Song of the Road") and "Aparajito" ("The Unvanquished"), but not "Apur Sansar" ("The World of Apu")) is between Apu and his mother, while in "Tokyo Story" it is between the parents and their daughter-in-law. Neither the Trilogy nor "Tokyo Story" have an ending but rather, leave us wondering about the fates of the central characters as they go on with their lives. If real life mimics the movies, then Setsuko Hara of "Tokyo Story" spent the last fifty years of her life in Greta Garbo obscurity while Soumitra Chattarjee, as another commenter pointed out, also lived to a ripe old age, fully part of the Bengali cultural scene until the pandemic took him in 2020. Many other of Ray's films have garnered acclaim. The quite good Calcutta Trilogy of the early 1970s is overshadowed by the Apu Trilogy. "The Home and the World" explores the role of the relationship between a husband and wife with the backdrop of the role of the colonized in their colonization. Ray's one film in Hindustani (Urdu), "The Chess Players" includes actors familiar to may in the West (Sir Richard Attenborough, Saeed Jaffrey, Victor Banerjee, Shabana Azmi). His "Shaka Proshaka ("Branches of a Tree") seemed at times to be about my own family. There is so much more to say about the great director, screenwriter, songwriter, poet and visual artist including the influence of RabindraNath Tagore on him. If one get's a chance, one should read Ray's book: "Our Films, their Films."
Apu dies at 85 Soumitra Chatterjee (also spelt as Chattopadhyay; 19 January 1935 - 15 November 2020)[2] was an Indian film actor, director, playwright, writer and poet. He is best known for his collaborations with director Satyajit Ray, with whom he worked in fourteen films. Starting with his debut film, Apur Sansar (The World of Apu, 1959), the third part of The Apu Trilogy, as adult Apu, he went on to work in several notable films with Ray, including Abhijan (The Expedition, 1962), Charulata (The Lonely Wife, 1964), Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest, 1969), Ashani Sanket (Distant Thunder, 1973), Sonar Kella (The Fortress, 1974) and Joi Baba Felunath (The Elephant God, 1978) as Feluda, Hirak Rajar Deshe (1980), Ghare Baire (The Home and The World, 1984), Shakha Proshakha (1990) and Ganashatru (Enemy of the People, 1989).
Truly enjoyed your review as I too had justed watched all 3 movies at one go recently. The films were far ahead of their time and certainly speak to me at different levels. I especially enjoyed the subtle call back of events in terms of composition of shots and subject in the films. Ray was a genius!
Great Review! I heard about this triology and have been meaning to watch it. After watching your review I'm definitely gonna watch it now. 😃 Just Subbed to you!
thank you Bret. I am sure you will enjoy it, and of course Pather Panchali (the first movie) is quite famous, which makes it good to watch just for the purposes of 20th century history and film history.
I finally got around to these masterpieces of filmmaking and for me Aparajito is the best one. I love Ray's use of trains - Apu leaves his village by train, travels to/from Calcutta by train and returns to his village by train. The score and cinematography top it off. All this from an unknown amateur - amazing!
Just watched Pather Panchali. There is a feel in every shots and the way it was taken. I am still thinking how he imagined these, may be spending days at these places. Oh its a masterpiece. will watch the remaining two. would have missed it without your review. Thank you!!
@Dr. Josh Matthews - Ravi Shankar may not have been well-known in the West in the 50's, but he was already a celebrity in India by the 1950's. He was the music director of All India Radio from 1949-1956 and was already a globe-trotting child performer from the age of 11/12 (early 1930's) to around 18 with his internationally famous elder brother Uday Shankar's dance troupe. He even performed (though not as a musician) at the Carnegie Hall in the 1930's. It was on one of his tours with his elder brother's group that he met his Guru and decided to stop touring and come back to India at 18 to devote himself to learning the Sitar full time. Long before he met George Harrison, Ravi Shankar was already a well-established household name in India with some international recognition. As a matter of fact, he again started touring Europe and the USA from 1956 onwards - but this time as a sitarist, not a child dancer - and won the Silver Bear Extraordinary Prize of the Jury at the 1957 Berlin International Film Festival for composing the music for the movie Kabuliwala.
Saw the first one about 4 decades ago. I've searched for this but I had the name wrong. Library's closing soon. I'll look tomorrow. When he threw away the jewelry has always remained with my own guilts. A very pretty film.
Satyajit Ray epitomized not merely the mastery of direction but also demonstrated profound prowess as a painter, music composer, writer, and lyricist. His cinematic creations were meticulously crafted to endure the relentless march of time, ensuring their perennial relevance amidst the evolving world. Ray fastidiously selected storylines that resonated with enduring significance.
Thanks for the sensitive review! ❤👍One thing to note here is that the novel "Pother Panchali" on which this film is made is one of the greatest novel in Bengali! I don't know of any western cinematic masterpiece made on a classic novel!
I immediately fell in love with his movies, and he's now one of my favorite directors, up there with Bergman and Kurosawa for me Wish it was easier to find his movies tho. a lot of them are just not available no where sadly. and a lot of the great movie streaming site (criterion and shit), are just not available in my country which really sucks Great video too! such a fantastic trilogy!
Ravi Shankar was extremely popular in India at the time of making this movie in India! You probably should have said that he wasn’t popular in the West until he paired with The Beatles!
I think more people who is interested in Satyajit Ray's works should read his novels of Feluda and many other detective and si fi works they are absolutely awesome.
You made a great point ie. Pather Panchali does not complete a storyline in itself! Actually it was the first novel by the author Bibhushan Banerjee and he didn't expect a publisher to publish too lengthy a novel by a new author and the novel is also of a new kind...not plot driven! So for this practical consideration he published the novel in two parts Pather Panchali and Aparajito! But the entire novel don't have any storyline...it's episodic! The only connecting factor is Apu whose development is the subject of the novel!
Agree with some of the comments of Doc Jiten below. Though the commentary is excellent, it misses important points, once in a while. Trains were introduced to India in 1853, at least 50-60 years before the time represented in the movie. I recall that in Aparajito there was a sequence that led me to believe the time represented was about 1925-1930. The commentary does not mention that before Apu's time in Calcutta, his parents and he moved from a village in Bengal, to Benares, where his father dies early on in Aparajito; depicted so movingly by Ray. For western audiences, the easiest of the trilogy to follow is, Apur Sansar. The "story line" becomes more and more important as you go through the trilogy. The incredible standard of acting (especially by amateurs such as Karuna Banerjee - my all time favorite actress) is a great plus. The story line of Pather Panchali is very simple - summed up by some lines in Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard") "the short and simple annals of the poor". Satyajit Ray - what can one say? Simply one of the greatest directors of all time.
I'm sorry to miss important points once in awhile. I don't think I was arguing that trains were new to India, just that the image represented modern industrialism introduced to an agrarian, pre-modern society.
Unfortunately I had a hard time connecting with these films. It might be because I’m just missing something culturally since I know nothing about Indian culture.
As a Bengali I couldn’t have felt prouder. But the truth is even though Ray is Highly acclaimed around the globe, here in the indian continent people barely care about his movies.The film industry of this continent is too narrow, and literally all the movies are cheesy, cringy Romantic musicals. Here, movies aren’t art. Here, movies are a trick to get money from the viewers pocket by using sexually explicit images and so called 'item songs'.
Quick correction for you: THE APU TRILOGY does not take place just after India's independence (which would've had them set in the late 1940s). These films take place between roughly 1915 and 1935. APARAJITO begins in 1920 and APUR SANSAR begins in 1930.
look for "pather panchali," then "aparajito," then "apur sansur." I found apur sansur quickly. the other ones might take some looking. these are also on the Criterion Channel, which you have to subscribe to.
I guess Aporajito might be the hardest for a Westrner to comprehend because there are so many subtle things in mom-son relationship thats probably exclusive to Indian society.
Another movie is coming named 'Avijatrik'. Story of this movie will began from the last part of 'The World of Apu' movie. Though they said that people should not compare this movie with Satyajit's trilogy. Trailer of this movie is realized.. You can check the trailer : ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-O5CZgJ1lm5k.html
This is 1080p drive link upindia.mobi/?page=mirror&id=463728&code=g4WGQyH&req_key=58bb39461ab8db40ed312b6c209270ab&down_key=150540939cdb571fc830ecc55597af27#
I'd like to mention it to the creator that satyajit ray being bengali has a god level status among west bengalis and Bangladeshis while he is known by most indians who only saw hindi cinema... Satyajit Roy's ancestors were Bangladeshi and he was born in the time of bengal presidency so addressing him as bengali rather than indian would be much more accurate...
find a website that tells you all of your options. You can, for example, go to letterboxd.com and look up the movie. It will show all of the places it's streaming, for free and to rent and buy.
