A little while ago I watched this film by Satyajit Ray for the first time, though I’d known about it for years. I read about it in this memoir I had to read while at school. I was also reminded of this film when I reviewed a book on a Bollywood film star a while back, as the book mentioned Ray when summarizing Indian film history. This film was very good, with some excellent characterization and acting. It has aged quite well, and The Harvard Crimson was certainly wrong when they said: "...Pather Panchali, remarkable as it may be, is something of a chore to sit through." This is not a film with extra fat, but is concise and engaging throughout.Here’s part of Dan’s review where he analyzes a scene from the end of the film. The final sentence also captures how this film is unique considering the time in which it was made.
“While packing up the family’s belongings, Apu comes across a bowl with a large spider spinning a web, and is repulsed. Then, in the next bowl he finds the necklace that the other girl claimed Durga stole. He takes it, runs to a pond of algaed water, and plops the necklace through the scum which recoalesces around the spot left by the necklace- a great touch, visually, but also it shows the brother’s love and loyalty to his flawed sister, to save her reputation in death, as well as his emergence from under the influence of the three women who have dominated his life until then. Whether he realized it or not, Ray adds an incidental poesy to the scene by having a definitively masculine act (throwing) end up with the past (the necklace) being consumed by the feminine (the water), to which Apu, the man in waiting, turns his back forever on. Yet, this all occurs in the famously masculine dominated society of the subcontinent, showing Ray well ahead of his time by having the film so effectively and wonderfully focus on the three main female characters.”Here is a little taste of the film. Though Dan describes the camera work as ‘pedestrian’, there are some nice visuals, such as in scenes like this one:
