Word: apu
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Director Satyajit Ray is for movies that are not like movies; see CINEMA, The World of Apu...
...World of Apu (Edward Harrison) completes, in alternations of suffering and joy, one of the most vital and abundant movies ever made. Based on a bestselling Bengali novel by Bibhuti Bannerji, the picture was written, produced and directed as three separate pictures by a 39-year-old Calcutta film buff named Satyajit Ray (pronounced Sawt-yaw-jit Rye). Each of the three lasts about an hour and 45 minutes and stands as a separate and complete cinema experience in its own right. But the moviemaker intended his trilogy ultimately to be seen and judged as a single immense discursive epic...
...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...
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...