Goin' to a Show

Film: Jalsaghar (The Music Room)
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I find it difficult to classify Satyajit Ray’s Jalsaghar as a musical despite the fact that it features a number of musical performances. It’s not a musical in the traditional sense; we don’t get people singing about their feelings or emotions. Instead, the film is based in part around a series of musical performances that are, more or less, staged concerts.

Biswambhar Roy (Chhabi Biswas) is one of the last zamindars in India, a zamindar being the equivalent of a feudal lord. The time of the zamindars is ending, and Roy is suffering financially due to a lack of lands to control. This doesn’t bother him much, and he lives his life as if the money will never stop. His great passion is music, and he frequently hires musicians to come and play in his private music room, inviting other important people in the area to enjoy the concerts. These cost him a great deal—in addition to paying for the entertainment he must pay for refreshments for the guests. It doesn’t trouble him, though.

And Then He Joined the Cast of The Simpsons

Film: Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)
Format: DVD from Fountaindale Public Library through interlibrary loan on big ol’ television.

There are those people for whom life is a constant struggle. One such person is featured in Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy, which ends with Apur Sansar (The World of Apu). In the first film, he loses a pair of family members. In the second film, he loses a pair of family members. Guess what’s in store for Apu in the third and final film.

We rejoin Apu (Soumitra Chatterjee) as he finishes his studies. He has done well in school, and his professor would like him to continue to study, but Apu simply can’t afford it. He takes low-paying jobs as a tutor, for which he is paid not quite enough to live on, considering his rent is months past due. Still, he is working on a vaguely autobiographical novel, and is happy in his work. He is overjoyed when his friend Pulu (Swapan Mukherjee) shows up out of the blue.

Over dinner, Pulu invites Apu to his cousin’s wedding out in the middle of nowhere. Having really nothing better to do, Apu decides to go. It proves to be a momentous decision. The bridegroom loses his marbles before the wedding, and thus the ceremony cannot go through. The girl, Aparna (Sharmila Tagore) must find someone to marry her before the appointed time ends, or she is destined to go through life unmarried. Apu, always one for the grand gesture and the romantic ideal, is coerced to step in and marry the girl, and he takes her back to Calcutta.

Things start off rocky between the couple, but it soon becomes evident that a very deep love develops between them despite their poverty. Aparna is at first resentful of Apu’s meager surroundings and lifestyle, but comes to love him, and she becomes the focus of his world, telling her that since their marriage, he has not worked on his novel because she means more to him than it does. Eventually, Aparna becomes pregnant and returns home to her parents to have the baby.

But, since this is Apu we’re talking about, it’s evident that things are going to go badly. The minute things start to look good for Apu, the waves come crashing in on him. Aparna dies giving birth to a son named Kajal (played eventually by Alok Chakravarty).

Apu handles this news badly, and essentially abandons his life and his child. He wanders, destroying his novel on the way, and settles in another part of the country. He has dreams of leaving India altogether to be away from any responsibilities he might have. Kajal, in the meantime, grows into a nasty little kid who plays dirty tricks on everyone around him. Apu sends money when he can, but never visits the boy and doesn’t even know his son’s name.

Naturally it falls to Pulu to come to the rescue once again and provide the moral guidance that Apu sorely needs. He is convinced to go and visit his son despite Apu’s words that he can barely just send the money for the boy’s care. Since the boy’s birth killed Aparna, Apu wants nothing to do with him. But he goes, and the last 20 minutes or so of the film concern what happens when Apu finally sees the child he fathered.

The film, and ultimately the entire trilogy, is essentially about not the meaning of life, but the purpose of life. Apu, despite the upbringing from his priest father and his intensive education, and despite his obvious gifts as a poet and writer, has lost his way. The death of Aparna cause him to lose his moral compass. It is the successful Pulu who is in many ways the moral core of the film, as it is he who goads Apu into the marriage to protect his cousin, and it is he who upbraids Apu to perform his duties as a father and to at least visit the son he has abandoned.

Honestly, I didn’t like the death of Aparna. She was my favorite part of the film. I’d have rather had Apu die than her, because she brought a palpable lightness to the film, an air of confidence and strength that I found reassuring and wonderful. Certainly killing her off advances the plot, and is necessary to get Apu to reach the conclusion of his own story, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Apur Sansar is a real and realistic film, which is what makes it so powerful. These are normal people, and they look normal. They aren’t mind-alteringly attractive, powerful, or wealthy. Most of the time, they are simply trying to survive from one day to the next. This sort of struggle is difficult to watch, but is certainly compelling. I can’t honestly say I enjoyed this film, but it marks an interesting place in the cinematic world. Like many an acclaimed film or series, it is much easier to respect than it is to really like.

Why to watch Apur Sansar: It’s the conclusion of Ray’s Apu Trilogy.
Why not to watch: Apu’s life still pretty much solidly sucks.

Oh! Calcutta!

Films: Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road), Aparajito (The Unvanquished)
Format: DVDs from Fountaindale Public Library through interlibrary loan on kick-ass portable DVD player.

This task I have set for myself is difficult. There are times when it is difficult because the film in question is one that I don’t want to watch or have difficulty watching. Other times, it’s that once I watch a film, I find that I don’t have a lot to say about it. Such is the case with the first of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road).

This is one of those films that is on the must-see list because of what it represents, not because of the movie itself. Satyajit Ray is one of the truly most important filmmakers in the history of India, and this is his first film as well as that start of the Apu Trilogy. This film represents nothing less than India’s arrival on the world stage of cinema. It is the first time that Indian film became known and discovered worthy of study outside of India. In short, Bollywood and all that it represents began here.

The film focuses on a single poor family in the Bengali region of India. The family is destitute, and it seems like nothing they do can change this. The father of the family, Hari (Kanu Banerjee) works as an accountant, but is so worried about losing his job that he won’t ask for his pay. He’d like to be a scholar and work as a playwright and priest, but there isn’t much work for him, and the money he does get needs to go to food and repaying debts instead of repairing the house, which needs to be fixed before the monsoon season.

Trying to keep the family together is Sarbajaya (Karuna Banerjee), who does her best with what she has. Her husband has his head in the clouds and little real ambition, and her children are, well, children. Additionally, she has to look after Indir (Chunibala Devi) an ancient, wizened relative.

The children are older daughter Durga (Uma Das Gupta) and younger son Apu (Subir Banerjee). They, despite the desperate poverty suffered by the family, enjoy themselves as much as they can. They watch travelling minstrel shows, get candy from a wandering seller, and play. Durga also likes to steal things, most notably fruit from a nearby orchard, much of which she gives to Indir. The thievery seems to stem from many things. First, the orchard once belonged to the family. Second, Durga is constantly hungry thanks to the crushing poverty. Third, evidently Durga sees nothing really wrong with taking what she wants.

This becomes a problem when the necklace of one of Durga’s friends goes missing. The poverty and natural inclination to steal makes Durga the most obvious culprit, and she is accused, but denies the theft. And then it’s dropped, essentially. Work dries up for Hari, but he has a possibility of some employment, and he leaves to pursue it. However, it turned out to be nothing, and he keeps looking for work for months. While he is gone, the family suffers from increasing poverty, which culminates in what becomes inevitable.

What makes a film like Pather Panchali difficult is why it made the list. It’s here for no other reason than because of its importance to Indian cinema and its reception on the world stage. For that reason (and I think that reason alone), the film is noteworthy and worth watching for anyone really serious about film. In actual practice, though, this film is really very dull. Not much happens for long stretches of time. There are plenty of shots of nature, particularly when the monsoon season starts. While beautiful, this is not languid or impressive. It’s just there. I’m certain that this is because Satyajit Ray was still learning the craft of putting a film together and hadn’t really learned tricks like pacing yet. It shows. While certainly masterful in places (Sarbajaya battling against the monsoon, for instance), it also shows the lapses of a brilliant amateur.

Ultimately, this is not a film I can recommend. Anyone truly serious about film should watch it because of its influence, but anyone who watches strictly for entertainment will not find a lot here. It’s slow and the pacing feels like it could be sped up a few miles per hour just so that something happens every now and then.

Aparajito (The Unvanquished) picks up not too long after Pather Panchali ends. Now in a new location, the family continues to struggle. Hari continues to look for work, and makes a little money with herbal remedies and reading scriptures. One night, he becomes very ill, and rather than resting the next day, he heads off to try to continue providing for his family. He doesn’t make it all the way back home, leaving Sarbajaya as the sole breadwinner.

She attempts to provide by taking work as a maid, but the family soon moves back closer to the ancestral home. Apu (in this film played initially by Pinaki Sengupta as a child and then as an adolescent by Smaran Ghosal) asks to be sent to school, in a way to fulfill his father’s dream for him—in Pather Panchali, his intent had been to educate Apu himself. Apu excels at school and earns a scholarship, taking him to Calcutta and away from his mother.

This relationship—Apu and Sarbajaya after the death of Hari is one of the main points of Aparajito. Sarbajaya doesn’t want to let go of her son. She would prefer that he stay in the small village rather than leave for Calcutta while Apu wants only to get away from all of the pain of his life so far and start somewhere new. Sarbajaya eventually gives in and allows him to go.

Once in Calcutta, Apu starts his own life, getting a job ,and thus finding few reasons to return to his mother and finding many excuses to keep him away. As time goes on and Sarbajaya begins to become ill, Apu eventually realizes that he must return home for his mother. It is here that the main crux of the film really occurs. Apu is essentially offered a choice: he can follow in the footsteps of his father or he can attempt to truly create his own life and path. His father’s path is the traditional one, but has held nothing but heartache and poverty for Apu and his family. While the new path may be more exciting, it is also unknown, and would break Apu’s ties with his past.

Like Pather Panchali, Aparajito is a slow film, taking its own time getting from place to place and event to event. However, it also feels much more controlled than Pather Panchali, as if Ray had learned something in the creation of the first film that he carried over into the second.

Combined, these two films make a sort of bildungsroman of Apu. This isn’t immediately obvious, because Apu is a far more secondary character in the first film and becomes central to the narrative only after the death of Hari in the first part of Aparajito. I have not yet seen or located the third film in the trilogy, but I would imagine that Satyajit Ray completes the coming of age and moral growth of Apu. At least that makes a certain sense.

While interesting, the version of Aparajito I found suffers in the subtitles department. The subtitles are simple white text, and frequently the words are completely washed out against the backdrop of the film, making some conversations very difficult to follow. Fortunately, the film itself is not a complex story, and it’s not too tough to figure out from actions and some context what is going on. Sadly, there are times when snips of conversation are lost, and it’s easy to simply assume that nothing important has been missed.

Like Pather Panchali before it, Aparajito is difficult to recommend for anyone watching strictly for entertainment, simply because the film is not extremely entertaining. It is notable, and worth watching, and interesting visually. It’s just painfully slow. Both films are helped tremendously by an excellent soundtrack courtesy of Ravi Shankar.

For what it’s worth, the longer these films continued, the more I became interested in them. I very much want to see the final film in the trilogy, Apur Sansar in the very near future.

Why to watch Pather Panchali: For the same reason some silent films are still worth watching—for the history.
Why not to watch: Much of it is pretty dull.

Why to watch Aparajito: A continuation of the story started in Pather Panchali
Why not to watch: Expect only partial resolution; it’s the middle of a trilogy.