Word: apu
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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...
...scholar, puts in a long day as a religious teacher on the banks of the holy Ganges. The mother struggles to make a home in a strange new world, to observe the country decencies and obey the laws of caste. But how can she keep her son Apu, now ten, from running wild in the swarming streets...
...life for her, but what about the boy? He spends his spare time cadging pennies by picking lice out of the rich man's hair. But then the rich man takes mother and son to his country estate, and for a while they are both very happy. Apu plays in the fields and studies to be a priest like his father-a matter that involves more folklore than book learning. Yet one day Apu comes home with a faraway look in his eyes. "Mother," he announces, "I want to go to school...
...proves a spectacular student. Several years later he wins a scholarship to the university in Calcutta. He rushes home in tremendous excitement. "Mother, can I go?" And here begins the long, slow, exquisite resolution of the drama: the story of how the mother dies in order that Apu may live as he was meant to live. The mother gives and gives, the son takes and takes. The only thanks she gets are sulks, or at best indifference. Her heart bleeds, but she is wise enough to understand that in hurting his mother he is only trying to end his dependence...
...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...