What I know going in
That the film is about a little boy named Apu and his family as they go about their lives in a small village.
Immediate reaction
Before I say anything, I want to get this out of the way. The most widely available home video release of Pather Panchali is absolutely terrible. I didn’t even have to pay for a copy, I got it as a birthday present, and I’m still pissed that money was paid for such a poorly-cared-for release. It’s so bad that it doesn’t even feel right for me to review as I know some of my negative thoughts about the film are due to a poor transfer and are probably not a fault of the film itself. First, the visual quality is low, like someone taped a showing of the film off an old CRT television. The picture is muddled, the black-and-white contrast is poor, and the depth of the film is destroyed. There are even a few moments where the film just skips forward due to missing or degraded material. Second, it’s easy to tell that there are multiple lines that aren’t subtitled and while it didn’t seem like I was missing anything important, it’s still highly annoying knowing that I am missing parts of the film. Finally, there is goddamn watermark in the right, top corner of the screen. The last thing a delicate, plot-light film like Pather Panchali needs is a constant distraction like that.
And you know what the real kicker is? The Criterion Company has the rights to all the films in the Apu Trilogy. I know that they are currently restoring Pather Panchali as I type this, and I am sure that their release will have an amazing, fully-restored transfer and be loaded with helpful extras. The release will probably spark a renewed interest in Ray’s film and, along with Mark Cousins’ The Story of Film, increase the film’s ranking on the next Sight and Sound list. If I wasn’t doing this marathon, I would have totally waited for the Criterion release. Unfortunately, they haven’t announced a release, and since I would like to finish this marathon soon, I couldn’t wait for it.
Phew, being a cinephile is so frustrating sometimes! Let’s get to the film itself now. Pather Panchali concerns a single family in a rural era of Bengali. I believe its set in the time it was made, but it’s hard to tell. Mainly, the film follows two children, Durga and her little brother Apu as they flit about their village, get into trouble, enjoy a few fleeting moments of beauty and innocence, and eventually face the harsher realities of their poverty-stricken life. For Durga that comes to learning about death through the demise of her aunt, being punished for stealing, and eventually succumbing to an illness brought on by a childlike dalliance in the rain. For Apu that is dealing with school and being forced to mature by being removed from his childhood home (although that development happens right at the end, I imagine the sequels will focus a bit more on that direction). It’s hard to tell how much Apu is affected by the tragic events in his life. It might be more accurate to say he is buffeted around by them.
This is where it gets very tricky for me to properly to discuss the film properly due to the overall poor quality of my copy. The film has many moments celebrating the smaller joys of a day-to-day life. These include Durga and Apu walking quietly through a field of wheat, Apu running to get a glimpse of a train, and a group of water plants disturbed by a small wave. The problem is these moments weren’t visually arresting for me. I can easily imagine they would be, given a proper release, but that is unfortunately out of my hand. Given that Pather Panchali has little plot, without arresting visuals, my engagement with the film waned a lot as it went on.
The other issue is that the social realism aspects of the film have been hugely influential in world cinema, and have thus been a little diluted. While something like 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days is hugely different from Ray’s debut, it’s easy to see the kernel of that film’s grittiness in the way Ray attempts to honestly portray his character’s rundown milieu. Going back in film history a little, there is also Abbas Kiarostami’sWhere is the Friend’s Home?Which is a bit closer to Ray’s film. That comparison brings up another issue I had with Pather. When the film reaches for those despairing moments, such as the mother’s anguish over Durga’s death, I think it falters a bit. There is just something about the presentation that doesn’t adequately convey the harshness of the environment the characters live in. I thought that Kiarostami’s film did a better job of balancing the light and heavy moments of Babak’s life. It also helped that that film had a more immediately engaging narrative.
I know that I am probably applying an aesthetic critique to the film, before such aesthetics even existed and that the poor image quality is probably tanking this aspect of the film as well, but I did find disengaged from the film and it’s been a bit hard to describe why. Hopefully, I find some compelling arguments when I do some more research on the film.
Further thoughts
Whenever I take trip through the internet to try and learn more about these films, I usually find a few good articles that force me to rethink my opinions on a film. Unfortunately, that did not happen for Pather Panchali. For a film of such importance, there is a shamefully small amount of in-depth articles about it. This was especially true for mainstream outlets, with Roger Ebert being the only critic who had more than a cursory review of the film, and even he focused more on the trilogy as a whole than Pather Panchali specifically. I believe this has less to do with the film being unworthy of analysis and more to do with the fact that the film still doesn’t have a decent home video release and its last, big retrospective was during the early 90’s. Again, I really hope that Criterion’s release comes out soon as I expect it will inspire a wave of excellent and help explain the importance of the film.
Speaking of that, I think the film is definitely important for two main reasons. The first is that it was many critics first introduction to third world film history. In general, the history of film still tends to focus on western (America, France, Germany, Italy, Russia) countries with the major exception being Japan. Pather Panchali changed all of that and proved to many a critic that fully-formed, challenging cinema could come from anywhere. The second is that Ray’s debut wedded a few major aspects of Italian Neorealism (non-actors, shooting on location) to a more poetic style. Like many have said, the film is not dour, social realist work. It has many moments of visual beauty that put it more in league with L’Atalante than The Bicycle Thieves.
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