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A writer's education. "You have to experience everything?" "Absolutely!" The world is a blinding glow outside the schoolmaster's office (student protests are heard) and then a voluminous downpour, Apu (Soumitra Chatterjee) stands under it with open arms and a smile. An intermediate degree doesn't much help find work in Calcutta, one published story ("A Man of the Soil") is plenty of encouragement for the lad in the rooftop hovel. Dickens is among his inspirations, his pal (Swapan Mukherjee) reads the unfinished opus appreciatively, "this is autobiography." "Partly, but a lot is fiction." The meet-cute at the center is a botched wedding, the groom is mad so the visiting protagonist steps in to save the young bride (Sharmila Tagore) from disgrace. "The curse turned into a blessing." Their brief marriage, expanded from Hollywood domestic portraits (cf. Cromwell's Made for Each Other), is among Satyajit Ray's loveliest passages—the erotic wonder of a hairpin on a pillow, the shared intimacy of a fan at dinner, a night out at the movies. (The epic of gods and monsters playing in the theater dissolves to the small screen that is the window in the back of the couple's cab.) Her death during childbirth curtails the idyll, the bereft Apu contemplates the train tracks (the camera tilts blankly upward for the suicidal thought) until a squealing pig lends voice to his anguish. The walk in the wilderness has pages from the manuscript scattered across a hilltop, a coal mine is a fitting hideout while the estranged son (Alok Chakravarty) stalks the woods with slingshot in hand. To go full circle is to confront the childhood self, "simple and direct," a crucial image from Pather Panchali returns as a toy locomotive. The ending pays tribute to De Sica, and departs from Whitman ("Shoulder your duds dear son, and I will mine..."). Cinematography by Subrata Mitra. With Sefalika Devi, Dhiresh Majumdar, and Dhiren Ghosh. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |