Tuesday 11 September 2007

The Apu Trilogy (Dir. Satyajit Ray)


Pather Panchali
The first film of the trilogy, and the foremost chapter in the life of Apu, this is a fascinating chronicle of life and death, the pleasure and pain of childhood, as well as the mundaneness and unpredictability of domesticity. Several international film critics have appreciated the "humanitarianism" of Ray's cinema, commenting that such scenes of rural bliss can be witnessed in a wide range of contexts. At the same time, the Academy Award-winning director was often criticised by the mainstream Indian film industry for highlighting the poorer aspects of the country. Is this similar to the dilemma confronting Deepa Mehta's elemental trilogy? Would be accurate to propose that all the "serious" Mehta films received better reviews and reception from overseas viewers? Mehta has acknowledged Ray's influence on her own work in a number of interviews, but the question remains whether she is a mere follower. One of my favourite images from "Pather Panchali" is the reflection of the sweet-seller and the brother-sister duo in the water as they walk along the river bank. Mehta seems to have appropriated this imagery, especially in "Water" which, not unlike "Pather Panchali" tries to balance aesthetic/stylised cinematography with the sheer austerity of the widows' lives.

Aparajito (The Unvanquished)
The adolescent phase of Apu's life is also likely to resonate with film viewers the world over. His migration from the Bengali countryside to the buzzing city of Calcutta for higher studies and a wider horizon does not initially sit well with his widowed mother, but is a social-intellectual turning-point of sorts. One could argue that this is the archetypal "coming of age" film tale, and is mirrored in the self-discovery undergone by the characters of Radha in "Fire", Baby in "Earth" and Shakuntala in "Water". Also, the battle between the forces of home/tradition/stability and those of homelessness/modernity/instability is being inwardly and outwardly staged in both Ray's "Aparajito" and in all of Mehta's elemental films (notwithstanding the particluarities of their historical and geographical circumstances). One of the scenes in the film, however, that directly evoked the memory of "Water" in my mind was the image of the dying father who asks for water that Apu just about manages to get from the banks of the Ganga in Benares (Varanasi). In "Water" (also set in Benares), Chuyia does the same for the ailing Patiraji, but the elderly woman expires before the water arrives.

The World of Apu
Does this title imply that Apu, now an adult, has finally become "worldly"? The idealist that is university-educated Apu, is rather like the Gandhian Narayan of "Water" in that both young men are driven to the women they come to love by their unconventional (and somewhat naive) nobility and are in turn shattered by the untimely loss of this love. Another noteworthy parallel is that just as Apu and his son Kajal are "rescued" by each other towards the culmination of the trilogy, Narayan and Chuyia are arguably saved by each other at the end of "Water". Again, it would be tempting to typecast the Apu-Aparna and Narayan-Kalyani love sagas into a universal (read Eurocentric) typecast of tradition-defying romantic passion that climaxes tragically. While this may aid "identification" with the male and female protagonists, their specificties of time, place and cinematic treatment must be kept in mind. Whether by virtue of their own artistic limitations or due to flaws in the script, John Abraham and Lisa Ray as Narayan and Kalyani fail to achieve the emotional finesse of Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore as Apu and Aparna. At the same time, the attachment of the latter couple is moving precisely because of its middle-class everydayness, and is thereby different from the "grand" love of Romeo and Juliet.

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