The Apu Trilogy (Pather Panchali, Aparajito, The World of Apu)

For many years these films were either impossible to get on VHS or sold in very poor quality dubs. I must applaud Sony Picture's decision to release these films re-mastered, using the finest quality prints available and re-doing the sub-titling to make them easier to read. Fifty dollars may appear too great a risk on three films you've probably never heard of but getting all three together and seeing them consecutively is the only way to appeciate their scope. END


India through Ray's rich lyric realism   February 2, 2002
Doug Anderson (Miami Beach, Florida United States)
23 out of 23 found this review helpful

Pather Panchali(1952): From the opening titles in Bengali to the first scenes of young Durga stealing guavas from an orchard and skipping away this film transports one completely into the world of an Indian family living in the country. When the young Apu is born and begins to grow he and his big sister Durga share all kinds of childish adventures. Durga and Apu are very entertaining and Ray captures childhood better than any other director. The adults are also well drawn. Stoic mother and dreaming want-to-be writer father living on the brink of poverty gives the film an attractive balance between adult and childs concerns. Made in the realist style in beautiful black and white , a mesemerising two hour film.
Aparjito(1956): This takes up right where the last one left off. The family moves to the city and there some of the most beautiful scenes are of the citizens and holy men going about their daily ablutions on the stone steps leading down to the Ganges. Apu growns up quickly(and the young actor is missed, replaced by an awkward adolescent with sprouting moustache)and this middle film follows Apu through his years at school in Calcutta. One of the best scenes is when the still young Apu is asked to read out loud in class and he does so in the most musical and poetic voice to the amazement of all his teachers and so eventually wins a scholarship. The first film all took place in the rural country. This one contrasts the industrial city and its sophisticated inhabitants and the rural countryside and its simpler inhabitants and focuses on the growing division within Apu himself.
The World of Apu(1959): Apu is a young man(and the original actor who played the little boy returns to play him as a young man). Rays filmic style has also become more sophisticated. The highlight of this last of the three films is the bride Ananda. She is utterly beautiful and quite easily puts Apu's post-student dissarray into order. Their scenes together are some of the most memorable of the trilogy, they relate in such a naive/sophisticated way. The formality of the arranged marriage and opulent ceremony with traditonal costumes contrasts markedly with the stark hovel where they begin their lives together and underlines the state of India herself, caught between observing its traditons and finding a modern identity. This couple finds a perfect balance.

I have purposely avoided giving some key details which are better left unknown so that the element of surpsise will not be ruined while you experience the films for the first time. I watched all three films in a row and was left in a spell by them. These films show the very best use to which the cinema can be put. I'm very glad they did not dub the voices and used subtitles because the sound of Bengali being spoken is as alluring as the Ravi Shankar music.


bildungsroman   January 16, 2000
Abul Taher
12 out of 12 found this review helpful

This trilogy by Satyajit Ray may be cinema's greatest bildungsroman, or the development or upbringing story. It is about the upbrininging of a boy, the eponymous Apu, beginning at early childhood to the stage of his fatherhood. Set against the backdrop of utter poverty in West Bengal, it is almost the metaphoric journey of the human spirit struggling through life's many stages of suffering, and finally triumphing in assuming its responibilities. The whole story is a rich tapestry of human suffering, from bitter poverty to the loss of loved ones, including the beloved one. And yet the trilogy isn't a tragedy, since the human spirit survives through these hardships, and does not lose its humanity or its faith in itself. Right at the end Apu regains his optimism in humanity, in taking the responsibilty of his child, even though the birth of this child resulted in the death of Apu's wife, that put him in a profound despair, in which he wandered in the wilderness for a number of years. It was a wilderness that was both physical, expressed in the geography of Central India, as well as a spiritual one, of which the land barrenness and ruggedness was a metaphor. The trilogy has many facets: from one angle, it is a realistic piece of documentary about poverty (indeed in the Venice film festival it received a special jury price for "best human document". At another level it examines the degrading effects of poverty upon human beings, which forces people to resort to wrongdoing, e.g. theft (as in Apu's sister stealing a necklace), or severs natural human bonds, (as when the grandmother is abandoned by Apu's mother), loneliness and depression (Apu's mother in the second part), and of course death. You always feel that every death in that film was caused by poverty in some way. Indeed this trilogy is a pilgrimage of the human soul through suffering, rather like King Lear is. But whereas Lear is about the human soul in its final stages of life, Apu encapsulates all of human life, which is a pilgrimage, not just the last stages of life, as in Lear. Throughout the film, Apu's determination to learn, educationally and spiritually, is the greatest source of the film provides. Apu educates himself and throws away the shackles of ignorance and superstition, and progresses. One can interpret that one of the film's messages may be that ignorance and supersttion are the causes of human suffering, especially in the form of poverty. The idea of progress gives the film its mythic quality. It is a more profound progress than a material one. It is spiritual and intellectual, which we all know ennobles the human condition and does not corrupt it like weaslth does. So one senses from this particular type of progress in Apu a possible cure to all the societal diseases of society, from poverty, crime and human cruelty. We feel that if every one in society undergoes such a progress then society as a whole might change for the better. So by the end of the film the human spirit does feel a sense of triumph. Finally, despite the films multifarious dimensions, we have to acknowledge that the film is actually about an ordianry human beings, who interms of fame or success does not achieve anything. So its not a story of the ubermensch of myths or popular culture, but rather a story about an ordinary person, just like us. Indeed a whole generation of calcuttans identified themselves with Apu. And this another supreme quality of the film, it triumphs the ordinary experiences of Everyman, not crassly, but sees it in its multifarious qualities. Indeed it dignifies the life of Man, even in the ignominy of dire poverty. Satyajit Ray's humanism transpires more brilliantly in this trilogy than any of his other works. We can almost say that Apu himself may be a perfect embodiment of that humanism that Ray harboured all his life, and which is present in all his films. This trilogy is the greatest humanistic document that I have ever come across, the profundity of which may even parallel the works of such other great artists as Shakespeare or Tagore.


Excellent all around   April 10, 2000
supastar (brooklyn)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful

The first movie was my favorite of the three, because I loved the boy apu. I also loved his grandmother who was briliant, and there were some amazing scenes with her, including a particular sillhoutte scene that I recall (I havent seen the film in over a year). The father is brilliant as well, into the second movie, as is the sister. Throughout the trilogy, the music that goes into the film is amazing. These are technical masterpieces, evident even to the amatuer film watcher like myself. And you get a great glimpse of mid-centruy Bengal and that culture from these films.


Profoundly moving   May 22, 1999
The Baker Street Irregular (Staines)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful

Any attempt to summarize these films is inevitably doomed to failure: how can one convey within a few words such poetry, such depth of feeling, such nobility of vision? To simplify, the major themes of these films are loss and progress. By progress, Ray does not mean the acquisition of wealth and power: this is nothing so crude as a rags-to-riches story. Ray's concept of progress is something far more subtle and profound - a moral progress that involves a willingness to engage with the complexities of life, painful though it often is. The impression one is left with at the end is that of a kind of glory - quite transcending the soul-destroying poverty against which these films are set. I have seen nothing quite as moving as this.

The emotional impact of these works seems to grow with each repeated viewing. These are films to live with, and, taken together, seem to me among this century's greatest artistic masterpieces, in any medium.