PATHER PANCHALI : THE MOST ACCLAIMED INDIAN FILM

Pather Panchali Movie Review

-- Aman Sharma

It's been more than 100 years to Indian cinema and have witnessed many great films in this time. I wonder why we pick this film as the most acclaimed Indian film still today. Director of this film Satyajit Ray and  Music director Ravi Shankar both are the  recipients  of India’s highest civilian award BHARAT RATNA and yes its the only film which features two bharat ratna awardees .  Ray had jotted down the ideas  of pather panchali  in his notebook but some thoughts haunted him like how to let pros muff there line on location or how to  shoot in low light of a rainy day with no set only real location because nobody had done that before so he converted this idea of making film. He went on to live abroad for six months and there he saw VittorioDe Sica’s classic “Bicycle Thief”  and after watching this he got the answers of all his questions as he says “de sica was doing just the things I wanted to do in my own film and succeeding beyond measure. Who said you couldn’t use non actors? who said you couldn’t shoot in rain ? Who said you had to use make-up ? And who said slickness was a criteria? I heard that Bicycle Thief had been shot with poor quality negative stock as better material was unavailable in postwar Italy . And yet flow of narrative is so smooth”.

This film revolves around Apu and his sister Durga  living with their parents and grandmother. Their father won't have any stable job so he leaves the village for a new job. In his absence Apu’s  family had very hard time to meet their ends. Before this film Satyajit Ray has never made any film,no actor (except the lady who play the role of grandmother ) has ever acted before and the cinematographer Subhrata Mitra was actually a photographer due to scarce resources Ray insisted him to do the shoot and that’s why there are lot of still shots in the film which gives a uniqueness to it. Durga’s relationship with her grandmother stands out for me. In the opening scene durga sneak a guava from their neighbours for her grandmother but her grandmother is so self obsessed that she was eating her food in front of durga knowing that she is also hungry. Even then she continuously brings fruits for her grandmother despite  getting thrashed by her mother and her crusty neighbour.  The scene in which Apu and Durga saw their  grandmother lying dead in the bamboo they were not sad but they are shocked as it is children’s first encounter to death  and  after that Durga and Apu  sitting on the foundation where her grandmother used to sit, just made me cry.

Another scene after Durga was also gone and Apu has dressed himself up as now there is no Durga to dress him up and he was about to leave the house then he go back and bring the umbrella though it was not raining. May be he remembers what rain did to her sister last time. I can bet you can't watch these scenes with dry eyes but there is not a single moment where you feel that it's getting over-dramatic . That’s why Satyajit Ray is so dexterous , film is so moving that it will make you cry, it will compel you to call your loved ones  and it will make you to come in line with your mortality. Even then there is no melodrama there is only one scene in the end  Ray shows Apu’s mother crying when his father is back home and show her the saree which he brings for durga except that you will not see anyone crying in the film. In 1940 hollywood filmmaker Jean Renoir visited bengal to scout for his next film "The River". Ray assisted him during weekends. Ray told him the idea of pather panchali and what Renoir said him changed the way Ray was approaching  his script. Renoir said “don’t borrow anything from hollywood”  I wish Jean Renoir meet other Indian filmmakers too particularly of our generation. Ray did justice to what Renoir said  as no other film depicts Indian society better than pather panchali , this film leads to the inception of Indian parallel cinema and Ray added another word in the lexicon of Indian cinema ‘Art’.