APARAJITO Movie Review

The Unvanquished

The centerpiece of Satyajit Ray's renowned Apu Trilogy, which traces the life of a poor Bengali boy from childhood through fatherhood, is an act of both grace and quiet revolution. It begins where its predecessor, Pother Panchali, left off, as the Bengali family arrives in the holy city of Benares in 1920. Apu's father becomes ill in his new home, and though the father believes that his immersion in the Ganges has purified him, it merely hastens his death. Apu, now on the brink of adulthood, discovers that he has been awarded a scholarship to the University of Calcutta. In order to make use of it, however, he must wrestle with his mother's pleas to stay with her and train for the priesthood, which is the family's tradition. What elevates Aparajito—and all of Ray's work—far above any suggestion of soap opera is the purity of his near-documentary approach, which is so unfussy and natural in its observation of human behavior that his films simply enter our bloodstream and become experience. His generally non-professional casts are so without affectation that his performers seem to hone in on the essence of each scene, each moment of small revelation, with the accuracy of a laser. It's the compounding of these moments that result in films that are remembered as more real than real life, and though Aparajito necessarily serves a somewhat mechanical function in getting Apu from the opening film to the trilogy's transcendental conclusion, it remains an essential and unforgettable link in a great master's triptych.

NEXT STOP … Pother Panchali, The World of Apu, I Vitelloni

1958 108m/B IN Pinaki Sen Gupta, Karuna Banerjee, Kanu Banerjee, Ramani Sen Gupta; D: Satyajit Ray; W: Satyajit Ray; C: Subrata Mitra; M: Ravi Shankar. Venice Film Festival ‘57:Best Film. VHS FCT,.MRV, TIM