Long Pauses

Tag: Director: Ray, Satyajit

  • The Apu Trilogy (1955, 1956, 1959)

    The Apu Trilogy (1955, 1956, 1959)

    Dir. by Satyajit Ray

    Another capsule review for the Arts & Faith Top 100.

    Between 1955 and 1991, Indian director Satyajit Ray made more than thirty feature films, but he’s best remembered in the West for the “Apu trilogy,” which launched his career. Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956), and Apur Sansar (1959) are based on the novels of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhya and follow their hero, Apu, from his impoverished childhood in a small Bengali village through early adulthood, when he becomes a novelist, husband, and father. Together, the films constitute one of the cinema’s true masterpieces, a work of Dostoyevskian richness-of-detail and emotional complexity.

    After studying art in college, Ray worked as an illustrator in the advertising industry while also pursuing his amateur interest in film. In the late 1940s he established a film society in Calcutta, and in 1950 he determined to make a small, intimate film of his own, one like those he’d seen on a recent trip to Europe. Of particular influence on Ray were the Italian Neo-Realists, who took their cameras out of the decimated studios and filmed, instead, using natural light in the rubble-strewn streets of post-war Rome. Two of these films are included in the Top 100: Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948) at #28 and Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (1945) at #80.

    Apu doesn’t make his first appearance until twenty minutes into Pather Panchali. Instead, Ray introduces viewers to day-to-day life around the boy’s home: his older sister Durga tends her kittens and steals fruit from a neighboring orchard for her aged “auntie”; his long-suffering mother cooks and cares for her family; his underemployed father daydreams of becoming a great priest and poet. When we do finally meet Apu, it’s an iconic image: Durga wakes him by pulling back a sheet, revealing first just one wide eye before exposing his full, smiling face, all amid a flourish of music from Ravi Shankar (Pather Panchali launched Shankar’s career in the West as well). Over the next five hours, we watch as Apu grows into a promising student, leaves home to live in Calcutta, suffers tragedy, and experiences great joy, all captured by Ray’s curious and compassionate camera. There are frequent moments of jaw-dropping cinematic beauty throughout the trilogy, but Ray is no showman or grandstander here. In these particular films he stays true to the Neo-Realist spirit, privileging the mundane details of life over big-budget splendor and artifice.

    The “Apu trilogy” is also notable for introducing Western audiences to Indian cinema. In the 1950s, Ray, Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, Ingmar Bergman, Rossellini, and, later, Francois Truffautt, Jean-Luc Godard, and Eric Rohmer were among a group of now-canonized foreign filmmakers who received wide distribution of their work in the United States. Many of these directors are represented in the Top 100. Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953) at #21 is an especially good pairing with Aparajito, the second of the Apu films. The Neo-Realist line that runs through the Italians and Ray extends all the way to contemporary filmmakers in the top 100 like Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Abbas Kiarostami, Jia Zhang-ke, and Lee Isaac Chung.

  • A Toast to Cinephilia!

    Thursday night, during my third and final flight of the day, I sat next to one more stranger and attempted to explain, once again, why I was flying from East Tennessee to Toronto.

    “Well, see, there’s this Portuguese filmmaker I really like, and the Cinematheque Ontario has pulled together all of his films, several of which are really difficult to see, and they’re also showing this other film that’s even more rare, and I’m thinking about contributing a chapter about this filmmaker to a friend’s book. And have you ever heard of Johnny Guitar? It’s a great old Western with Joan Crawford that’s never been released on DVD, and I’ve always wanted to see it on film. Plus, Toronto’s just a great city, and I’m meeting a friend there. We always go to the big festival in September, but that’s still three months off, and we’re both jonesing for some great movies and conversation and urban excitement, because we both live in the suburbs. And . . .”

    And the more I talked, the crazier it all sounded.

    In my defense, much of my incoherence can be attributed directly to desperate exhaustion. I’d just spent nine hours in the Detroit airport, after all, waiting and waiting for the Northwest Airlines mechanics to repair whatever ailed the plane that was supposed to take me to Toronto. I waited and waited until the flight was officially cancelled, at which point I immediately rebooked, only to end up waiting some more. Eventually, I boarded a plane headed toward Cleveland, which proved to be the shortest flight of my life — and thank God for that, because after we landed I still had one more layover. That third and final flight took off, finally, around 7:30; I checked into my hotel room almost exactly three hours later, just as the Cinematheque’s screening of Straub and Huillet’s rare Sicilia! (1999) ended.

    So, that’s the bad news. The good news is that within the hour, I’d met up with Girish at the hotel bar, where we proceded to drain several pints of Upper Canada Dark (on empty stomaches, I should add) and chat about films and music. (The Beer Cellar at the Days Inn downtown pipes in surprisingly good Muzac.) And Girish had more good news. What I remember of his story (through the Upper Canada haze) was later confirmed by two other witnesses of the event, but I’m paraphrasing:

    “So, Darren, I ran into James Quandt at the screenings. I’d told him about you last week, about how you were flying up for the Costa films. When I mentioned tonight that you’d become trapped in Detroit, he excused himself and walked back to the projection booth. When he returned, he told me that, rather than mailing the prints back tomorrow as they’d planned, they’re instead going to hold onto them for a few more days. He asked me to tell you to be at Jackman Hall at 4:30 on Saturday. They’re going to have a special screening of Sicilia! for you.”

    And that, in a nutshell, is why Cinematheque Ontario is Mecca for cinephiles. Frankly, if Girish had given me the news after the second round of beers instead of midway through the first, I probably would have cried. A total trainwreck of a day had suddenly been redeemed by a simple act of kindness — or acts of kindness, as, first, Girish was looking out for me and then other members of the Cinematheque staff (projectionist Alexi Manis most of all) were, I’m sure, inconvenienced by the sudden change of plans.

    Consider this post a valentine to the good people of the Cinematheque and to the good work they do. I can’t thank them enough. And consider it a toast to cinephilia, too. Raise your glass and let the drunken sentimentalizing begin!

  • The Home and the World (1984)

    The Home and the World (1984)

    Dir. by Satyajit Ray

    Images: Film appears to be lit entirely by source lighting. Interiors are often very dark, reflecting the isolation and confinement within the inner sanctum of the estate. Memorable images include: profiles of faces lit by candlelight; Bimala pressed against the wall, staring ahead motionless (followed by dissolve into widow’s whites); crowds of young nationalists, lifting their fists and chanting, “Hail Motherland!”

    • • •

    In 1907, British rulers of India have partitioned Bengal, dividing the Muslims from the Hindus and silencing their collective political voice in the process. In response, Swadeshi, a burgeoning nationalist movement, demands a boycott of all British goods. We experience Swadeshi through the eyes of Bimala Choudhury (Swatilekha Chatterjee), a modern woman (she has been educated) married to a modern man. Nikhilesh (Victor Banerjee) is a wealthy land-owner who was educated in the West and who objects to the repressive treatment of Indian women. He allows Bimala unprecedented freedom, including freedom of movement around their estate, opportunities to meet other men, and English lessons. Against this modern relationship, Ray contrasts Bimala’s more traditional sister-in-law, a woman whose husband was unable to even recognize her face on his deathbed.

    The first man Bimala meets is Sandip (Soumitra Chatterjee), a charismatic leader of Swadeshi and former classmate of Nikhilesh. Sandip has arrived in hopes of turning his old friend toward his cause, but Nikhilesh steadfastly refuses, much to his wife’s disfavor. Bimala is instantly taken by Sandip, a man of superficial passion. She is so moved by his zealous rhetoric that she becomes the first female member of Swadeshi. The two begin to meet privately, eventually striking up an affair. Nikhilesh is aware of their relationship, but refuses to intervene, preferring instead that his wife’s love be granted freely, even if to another man.

    Bimala strikes me as an Indian equivalent of Lily Bart. Like Edith Wharton’s famous heroine, Bimala is allowed the freedoms of a modern woman, but lacks the experience and social context necessary to use it effectively. After spending the first decade of her marriage in isolation, forbidden from even seeing a man other than her husband, she is ill equipped to read Sandip’s hypocrisy. She mistakes his performed speeches for genuine passion, and suffers the consequences for her failing. For Ray, there are no simple solutions for the “woman problem”: the fate of Bimala’s sister-in-law is clearly not acceptable, but neither is Bimala’s.

    In The Home and the World there are also no simple solutions to the complex legacy of British imperialism. Ray forces us to listen to several of Sandip’s speeches from start to finish. It’s an effective move, for his words resonate with some truth: by becoming dependent upon British goods, the people of India have surrendered economic clout and filled the pockets of Western manufacturers and importers. In so doing, they have also taken a significant step toward assimilation, internalizing a Western value system that diminishes their own cultural accomplishments and beliefs. Sandip’s chant, “Hail Motherland” (even with its frightening echoes of mid-century European nationalism) sent a chill down my spine like it did Bimala’s.

    But we also see the other side of the issue through Nikhilesh, who refuses to support Swadeshi because of its untold economic consequences on the poor of Bengal. British goods are not only of better quality, but are cheaper; remove them from the local economy and the poor will be forced to buy less for their families and sell less in their markets. Like the manufactured goods sold (or burned) in Bengal’s markets, other British imports — including democracy, education, and greater freedom for women — must be acknowledged for the good and harm they have brought to the people of India.