Criterion Corner: The Apu Trilogy (1955 - 1959) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Janus Films

Indian maestro Satyajit Ray’s tightly budgeted neorealist coming-of-age masterworks Pather Panchali, Aparajito and Apur Sansar otherwise known internationally as The Apu Trilogy may well be among the greatest portraits of childhood adolescence into adulthood projected onto a movie screen.  Predating and debatably informing François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and subsequent Antoine Doinel film series in terms of encapsulating the youth experience while going through the cycles and hardships of ordinary, typically poverty-stricken young men navigating their personal challenges, The Apu Trilogy is widely considered to be among the most important film trilogies ever made if not the most achingly human artistic creative expressions. 

 
And yet, the films were nearly lost forever when a fire in a London warehouse in 1993 incinerated the original negatives for all three films, laying the groundwork for an extensive rescue operation using what elements remained both from the negatives and surviving release prints from around the world to try and resuscitate the legendary Indian screen epic for a whole new generation of filmgoers.  Creating a new 4K digital master for all three films and released on blu-ray disc and eventually 4K UHD by The Criterion Collection, modern cinephiles have a chance to essentially dine in on one of cinema’s most delicious meals that keep coming and coming like natural wind, breathtaking and moving as it breezes through you.
 
Based on the novels Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) and Aparajito (The Unvanquished) by Bibhutibhusan Bandyopadhyay with the latter text split into two films including the concluding piece Apur Sansar (The World of Apu), this tectonic totem of pure cinema follows the life of Apurba ‘Apu’ Roy (Subir Banerjee) from his childhood in rural 1910 Bengal, beginning with 1955’s Pather Panchali.  Living with his mother Sarbajaya (Karuna Kanerjee), sister Durga (Runki Banerjee), aunt Indir (Chunibala Devi) as she struggles to hold the family unit together while her priest husband Harihar (Kanu Banerjee) ventures off to the city seeking better employment for the family, Apu experiences a series of hardships and upheaval within the family including but not limited to poverty and death.  Told largely from Apu’s perspective as he wades through surviving in the rural village while witnessing interpersonal disputes between his mother and his aunt over her tendency to steal food from their already depleted reserves. 

 
A vision of India never seen or heard onscreen before with luminous, radiant camerawork by Subrata Mitra who would shoot the subsequent installments and adorned with a lovingly soulful and kaleidoscopic score by Ravi Shankar, the first in Satyajit Ray’s The Apu Trilogy though a work of fiction plays like natural life unfolding in real time in a near-neorealist fashion.  Characterized by Earthiness in the rural arena of Nischindipur as Apu and his family forage in the terrain, the neorealist approach renders an Indian world onscreen untouched by time.  Performances across the board feel naturalistic and powerfully emotional in scenes calling for it with Karuna Banerjee as the strong-willed maternal force in this poor family unit channeling intense energies onscreen.  Also strong in the piece is Chunibala Devi as the aged aunt whose presence becomes increasingly contentious in the Roy household.  Of course, the film’s most important character played by Subir Banerjee with his bright young eyes and sharp smile exudes innocence, curiosity and awe.
 
While director Ray was not necessarily initially interested in adapting the second text Aparajito to the screen, let alone splitting it into two halves to make a third feature Apur Sansar, the success of Pather Panchali was such that it encouraged Ray to have a change of heart.  Picking up where the first film left off, Aparajito filmed a year later follows Apu ten years later into young adulthood with the role now played as a young lad by Pinaki Sen Gupta before segueing into adolescences with Smaran Ghosal.  With the principal leads playing Apu’s parents back, the film settles into an apartment in Varanasi where father Harihar continues working as a priest dreaming of spreading the word praying and singing on the river Ganges.  Barely making ends meet, Harihar contracts a fever and dies soon thereafter, forcing his widow Sarbajaya to find work as a maid and return to the village of rural Bengal. 
 
As Apu apprentices as a priest back in the village of Mansapota, his schoolmaster takes notice of the boy’s academic talents and eventually garners a scholarship to Kolkata.  However this proves to be upsetting for his mother Sarbajaya who doesn’t take well to being left behind.  Apu grows further ensconced in his studies and work while mother yearns and pleads for him to come visit more often.  Unbeknownst to Apu, Sarbajaya is also coming down with some sort of illness which she keeps quiet about lest she wants to do anything to derail Apu’s studies. 

 
Dealing with grief and loss from a different angle while still through the eyes and ears of the titular Apu Roy, Aparajito follows the difficulties encountered by our protagonist with maturity and grace.  It also offers in contrast to Pather Panchali a glimpse of more modernized urban life in India adjacent to Apu’s impoverished rural upbringing which he still finds himself drifting in and out of.  Touching on an intermediary period in a man’s life when he’s got one foot out of the nest ready to take on the world while maternal instincts and his mother’s own needs inevitably tug back, Aparajito hits even deeper than the film’s predecessor.
 
Three years later, Satjayit Ray would film the other second half of the book Aparajito in what became known as Apur Sansar written for the screen by Ray.  Bringing back together his crew and casting Soumitra Chatterjee in the role of the titular Apu, the film jumps forward to the 1930s where Apu is now an adult.  Unemployed and living in a rented room in Calcutta, Apu struggles to make ends meet as a part-time private tutor while devoting much of his spare free time to writing a semi-autobiographical novel. 
 
After his school friend Pulu (Swapan Mukherjee) drops in for a visit on the way to his cousin Aparna’s (Shamrila Tagore) wedding, Apu finds himself whisked into unexpected marital affairs when the groom turns out to be insane and Pulu pleads for Apu’s intervention.  Reluctantly after much pressure from Aparna’s siblings, Apu agrees and the two move back into his impoverished Calcutta apartment much to her chagrin.  Surprisingly the twosome fall in love anyway and they sire a child.  Unfortunately Aparna doesn’t survive childbirth, leaving an emotionally devastated Apu wandering the world aimlessly before Pulu persuades him to return home and try to raise his child Kajal (Alok Chakravarty).
 
Coming full circle replete with a noted change in the title sequence from a white background of black-on-white to a black background with white-on-black credits in the third film, forming something of an emotional crescendo that doesn’t really work the same way without having seen all three films as one giant whole, Apur Sansar is one of the most powerfully emotive motion pictures ever put before movie audiences around the globe.  From Ravi Shankar’s fleeting, ethereal soundscapes punctuated by deeply sorrowful piano cues that cut through the heart like a knife to recurring cinematographer Subrata Mitra’s painterly and vast cinematography, the film all but completely shatters you. 

 
The best possible third film in a trilogy in an arena full of lackluster concluding pieces, each Apu film builds on itself towards an even greater emotional if not physiological reach in such a way that it really does require you to digest all three pictures to get the full meal, so to speak.  Three of the greatest examples of Indian cinema, human documentary and character driven drama, watching The Apu Trilogy is like gazing in awe at the weather in all of its grandiosity as well as intimacy.  You’re enthralled, moved, wounded and somehow or another you come away from them a different, more evolved person.  Few movies if any look so deeply into one character’s soul until he’s no longer just a fictional creation but a real being living within the framework the flickering silver screen. 

--Andrew Kotwicki