Word: apu
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Panchali, director Satyijit Ray has recorded certain portions of the life of an Indian family over a ten year period, describing the interaction of the five important characters: the mother and father, a daughter, a young son, and an old sick aunt. Shortly after the beginning of the film, Apu, the son, becomes a central figure, the viewer of the action, the mute commentator. The first we see of him is an eye, which his sister opens with her fingers; and his eye follows the action for the rest of the film, peering over stone walls, looking out from...
Left to hold the battered fort, Mother worries--worries that her husband will be gypped in the big city, that daughter Durga is stealing necklaces from the neighbors, that son Apu is getting neither enough to eat nor enough to read. Rounding out the family is Old Auntie, who must be at least an octogenarian...
There are humorous moments, too, but unlike Hollywood's contrived chuckles, they grow out of life-as-it-is. Little Apu watches his school-master peddle rice while drilling the quiet students; he is fascinated by a cacophonous brass band that marches through the village; he sits goggle-eyed when a travelling troupe provides "culture" at the local theatre...
...would be impossible to capture Pather Panchali in a glib formula. Five human beings, from young Apu to Old Auntie, each sings his or her own eloquent "lament of the path." But the film is never depressing, for however great the sorrows, they face the path resolutely...
...probably be weighed in the balance with Pather Panchali and found slightly wanting. But such a comparison misses the point: as the second movement in a composition, Aparajito is meant to express the consequences of the first movement, Father Panchali, and to prepare the mood of the third movement, Apu Jagat ("The World of Apu"), which will probably be released in the U.S. in late 1959. In a pictorial sense the film lacks something of the noble simplicity of Father Panchali, but if its images are more sophisticated, they are no less brilliant and effective. What is perhaps most striking...