Pather Panchali – Of Big Messages In Small Moments

There are certain films that leave an imprint on your mind beyond what one would usually expect from a piece of celluloid. One such film is Satyajit Ray’s debut as a film director – Pather Panchali.

I am perhaps one of the few people who read the book by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay before watching the film, in fact 10 years before for the book had such an impact on me that I couldn’t bear to have a cinematic representation of it.

But then IHC decided to screen the film and I decided to watch it and the rest as they say is history. I had long heard my parents, sibling, fellow cinephiles, Martin Scorsese, basically the entire world rave about this classic but nothing anyone says can ever prepare you for the cinematic brilliance & emotional journey that Pather Panchali is.

As I write this, scene after scene from the movie is playing before my eyes – Durga & Apu’s introduction, Indir eating plain rice; the rains; the field where they play & wait for the train; Durga combing Apu’s hair; Dugra leaving Apu all alone & then the rains again…

This film is a study in mis-en-scene, cinematography and in a very basic sense – how scenes are broken down & what they are designed to say. The smallest of moments depict the biggest of emotions – the way Apu tries to comb his hair himself for the first time after Durga dies or how the rain which used to thrill him earlier scares him away or the shot of the train from the fields as if Durga is bidding her family goodbye as they leave the village…each frame, each scene, each expression is a story unto itself.

Pather Panchali & Satyajit Ray become even more legendary when you read about the making of the film – from lack of finance to shooting troubles in a remote village to seasonal changes affecting continuity like the field getting harvested before they could shoot the train scene or the train itself which had a set time of crossing that could not be changed – reading about the behind the scene aspects of Pather Panchali by Ray himself is like watching a film within a film!

66 years have passed since Pather Panchali released and became a cornerstone in filmmaking not just in India but the world & introduced Satyajit Ray to the world of cinema over which he would reign forever. In the words of master filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, “Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon. I can never forget the excitement in my mind after seeing Pather Panchali. It is the kind of cinema that flows with the serenity and nobility of a big river.”