Jandy Hardesty’s review published on Letterboxd:
Film 13 for the Letterboxd Season Challenge. The other films I plan to watch for the challenge are here.
Week 13: Coming of Age
Challenge: Watch one previously unseen Coming of Age movie that made it into one of these three lists; BFI's 50 Movies to See Before the Age of 14, Adam's Top 50 Coming of Age movies, or Zapproved Coming of Age movies.
I rushed my way into this one because I wanted to catch up with this challenge as much as possible before starting a personal movie challenge this week, and I probably shouldn't have done that. I was a little sleepy throughout, and thus had some trouble tying the narrative together while I was watching it. It felt extremely vignetty - maybe it really is, but maybe I was just too low on cognitive ability to follow the connections.
There were lots of things I loved about it - Apu is pretty much the most adorable thing ever, and the film did a wonderful job of capturing that time, place, and people in their everyday lives. Several moments with the mother really moved me, like when light broke over her face at finally receiving good news from her husband - then the long months of nothing were devastating. She's very good, even though she comes across as somewhat unlikeable at the beginning.
I'm putting this immediately on my rewatch list, and I'm sure it will benefit from that.
After watching a film, I always rank it on Flickchart, a movie website that pits movies against each other until you form your ranked list of favorite movies. Here's how The Kid Brother entered my chart:
Pather Panchali > Shock Corridor
Pather Panchali > 10 Things I Hate About You
Pather Panchali < Doulos: The Finger Man
Pather Panchali < Rome: Open City
Pather Panchali < Ex Machina
Pather Panchali < Orpheus
Pather Panchali > Johnny Tremain
Pather Panchali > The Journey of Natty Gann
Pather Panchali > Cops
Pather Panchali < Dogma
Pather Panchali < The Graduate
Pather Panchali < The Furies
Final ranking #843 out of 3568