1955 ‘পথের পাঁচালী’ Directed by Satyajit Ray
Impoverished priest Harihar Ray, dreaming of a better life for himself and his family, leaves his rural Bengal village in search of work. Alone, his wife, Sarbojaya, looks after her rebellious daughter, Durga, and her young son, Apu, as well as Harihar's elderly aunt Indir. The children enjoy the small pleasures of their difficult life, while their parents suffer the daily indignities heaped upon them.
A Canção da Estrada, Song of the Little Road, Apu Trilogy 1: Song of the Little Road, Apus Weg ins Leben - 1.: Auf der Straße, The Saga of the Road, The Lament of the Path, Song of the Road, Droga do miasta, 아푸 1 - 길의 노래, La canción del camino, 아푸 제1부 - 길의 노래, Pather Panchali: El pequeño sendero, Песента на пътя, 大地之歌, Pjesma puta, Sangen om vejen, Ballade vom Weg, Tien laulu, La complainte du sentier, Το τραγούδι του δρόμου, To tragoudi tou dromou, Az út éneke, Il lamento sul sentiero, 大地のうた, Kelio daina, Sangen om veien, O Lamento da Vereda, Песнь дороги, Pather Panchali (La canción del camino), La cançó del camí, Sången om vägen, Пісня дороги, Apus Weg ins Leben: Auf der Straße, La Complainte du sentier, פאתר פאנצ'אלי, Yol Türküsü, 길의 노래, Az út éneke (1955)
France
India
USA
France
NetherlandsAL
France
Germany12
France
France
Germany
India
Netherlands
USA
rain is on the horizon with the promise of a storm but there is sugarcane in your mouth right now and the field's flowers are gently swaying. the beauty of it all and the harsh reality are not bitter enemies. they are close friends, interweaving to the point that you cannot parse through the difference. such is life.
Life. This is what Satyajit Ray's directorial debut is all about. It is seemingly an impossible task to plausibly capture such a vast and abstract concept as life on film, it's not like you create some characters, a plot for the characters to follow, place the camera in front of actors, start rolling and you're good to go. It takes much more than that and very few films have encapsulated life as well as Pather Panchali. It portrays primal aspects of the life of a living being - not just human beings although humans are the focus here - like birth, death and everything in between and beyond. It covers the defining moment of growing up with the accompanying feelings…
Women are alone.
Sarbajaya is alone. She has time only to prepare food and care for her family. Sometimes, she can eat, but we never see her sleep — not once. There is no Sarbajaya, apart from her responsibilities.
Her husband gives their children money because he loves to see them joyful; Sarbajaya is miserly so that she can give their children the food they need to stay alive, if only just. She is the source of discipline in their lives; her husband has the freedom to offer them nothing but indulgent affection.
When Sarbajaya hears the train, it speaks to her of her wayward husband; of his escape to the city; of the life he has on his own,…
The camera almost boasts about its indifference to human suffering when it captures on film the beauty found in some of mans darkest moments! No one in its path is spared, their most private of despairs and anguish flayed open and spilling out from a gaping wound for all to bear witness!
Painful as it may be for the viewer to walk in the protagonists shoes so-to-speak, the journey is on a well-trodden path not unfamiliar to humanity past and present for we the common man are all kinsmen when it comes to the many injustices and cruelties of life!
The most human film you will ever experience!
At any given mid-level film festival, audiences are almost guaranteed to come across a very particular brand of familiar "festival film". A slow, "simple" film with sparse narrative, usually set in some "exotic" (i.e. non-American/Western European) location, about the everyday lives of "common" (read: poor) people, full of "lyrical" and "naturalistic" cinematography and relatively little dialogue. The film's protagonist will more often than not be a child, through whom the audience can observe with "innocent wonder" the simple, rural lives of these people. Critics will invariably praise the film for it's "warmth" and "humanism", and almost as inevitably the film will be pleasantly unremarkable and largely forgettable.
Even more so than the work of Yasujiro Ozu (more or less the…
Every once in awhile there comes a film that I’ll watch that reminds me why cinema, and more importantly foreign cinema, is so important to the world. Cinema is global, it is not bound by international borders, not hindered by cultural differences, and not diminished by language barriers. It teaches us that regardless of the time period, the color of our skin, the countries of origin, and the cultural background, we are all human, and that is an undeniably collective experience.
Pather Panchali is that film for me.
9.2 / 10
The most confident of directorial debuts, Pather Panchali is the most valuable kind of cinema. It has a purity, delving into the beauty of childhood innocence but never avoiding tough topics. It does not idolise or admire poverty, but accepts such a reality and builds from there. The pre-partition Bengal is presented through just a small village, or more specifically one family. The plot is fragmentary and without large conflict, yet that does not mean it has no pain. Pather Panchali may be deeply humanist, with an understanding of life and a respect for all people, but it also acknowledges death, presented in stark images of implication. Wordless scenes often form the most heartbreaking parts of the story, with music…
A movie that transcends cultural barriers. For example, much like Apu, I too greet the arrival of mail by running around my house screaming
The 7 year-old's pick to ring in the new year. Good times. If Auntie's death masque visage doesn't haunt his nightmares for the foreseeable future well then I don't know 7 year olds. He claims that he loved it. I'm just proud of him for sticking with it and I like that Apu's face (along with all the others) is taking up residence in his impressionable mind.
Thing that struck me this time: the animals and people's relationship to them. Auntie in particular clearly detested them, resenting them for having a home when she had none. Her introduction has her crushing a kitten beneath her bag and right before she leaves the house for the final time, she stares at a dog standing on the porch with palpable hatred.
Everything else as remarkable as I remember it.
Twice the heart of most Western art-house films, inevitably resulting in twice the hurt. A revolutionary milestone of Indian cinema, Pather Panchali opens the famed Apu Trilogy on a dramatic shift from the highly sensationalised presentations Eastern audiences had grown accustomed to at the time, breaking from the Bollywood traditions of make-up and theatrics for a striking, in-depth study of the Bengali way of life, starkly articulated through a neorealist approach. Like Rossellini or De Sica, Ray strips down the narrative to its bare-bones minimum, making for a viewing experience that requires utmost patience and focus. Its glaring resemblance to the Italian cinema of the 40s is undoubtable, and much like Rome Open City or Bicycle Thieves, if there’s anything…
Pather Panchali is the introductory film in The Apu Trilogy and one which radiates an exhilarating spell of magic and magnificence. Written and directed by Satyajit Ray and based on a serial which first appeared in a Calcutta periodical in 1928, there’s nothing quite like this movie. The degree of skill on display supported the foundation for the two subsequent instalments as well as hurling Ray into the sphere of world film. It irreproachably communicates intense sentiment and poetic pleasures which reverberate deeply, and it's international success is due in no small part to the human emotions at its nucleus possessing a universality to them. The film additionally spotlights some marvellous music By Ravi Shankar, who reached further global attention after being championed by Beatles guitarist George Harrison.
