On The Apu Trilogy

Discipline, it is said, is finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them in a good way. Self discipline, is to follow them in a better way.

When I consider the force that draws and subsequently absorbs one into Satyajit Ray's films, it strikes me that it is a look at the world, at every age and in every circumstance, through the eyes of a child. Satyajit Ray's beautiful, melodious movies are dedicated to his original vision of the world; a vision of innocence, curiosity and complete acceptance. This is Ray's famous humanism, his discipline, which he adapted from the neorealist and new wave masters of Europe. In in my opinion he did it in a better way. But that might just be me.

Nobody makes movies like these anymore- there are few stories out there now, that do not judge their characters. Consider the character of Apu who ambles through the stages of life over the course of three movies in the Apu Trilogy- Pather Panchali, Aparajito and Apur Sansar. There is not a moment, along the evolution of his complex, blue-gray character- idealist, escapist, brilliant yet unfocussed, morally flimsy, ill-disposed to dealing with both consequence and responsibility - that you do not completely understand his motivations, identify with him and even love him as Apu, the shirtless little tamarind-stealing urchin with an early fascination for trains that go out into the great, wide world.

A still from Aparajito

The great danger of romantics is the expectation of a beautiful resolution to the questions of life, presented in poetry, in pleasing color schemes, with a matching soundtrack. It's not a great time for dreamers; yet as a generation we have the anomalous power of indulging our inner romantic; we can turn all our pictures to sepia tone, crop out the bad parts and erase the scars. It sometimes strikes me as the victory of cynicism over all of us; that we have all, en masse, accepted that life cannot be beautiful without make up.

But take a look at any one of Ray's incredibly low-tech, incredibly beautiful films. In Ray's black and white world, one sees colors. He hides none of the bestial indifference of the world to personal suffering - death, loneliness, illness, abject poverty, the dizzy confusion of the youth, the sudden imposition of fate upon fantasy- all of these are the recurrent themes of the Apu trilogy. Yet what in life we would find unbearable, here it is expected, acceptable, even uplifting. How is this so? How can squalor, sadness and deficiency engage the senses, heart and mind, as would opulence?

It is as Apu himself explains to his friend Pulu in Apur Sansar, as he details the many tragedies that befalls the unfortunate hero of his great, literary effort (oh, how many bells that ring). While his hero fails at his ultimate goal, it is not a tragedy, because the point of life is to traverse it. As in the case of this hero, there is no opportunity for wasted potential in Ray's movies, for every experience, good and bad, offers the chance for for engagement with life. Everything is exquisite in its native essence- the tingling bell on the neck of a starving calf, a devout priest finding death at the banks of the holy Ganges, the abrupt end of girlish anticipation in a thunder storm that had earlier symbolized her own vigorous, burgeoning youth. Ray diverts the crushing emotional response of every sad situation, to the spectacular visual poetry of its circumstance. Sometimes I wonder if reading the original written work upon which this series is based, would evoke a different sensation than what the films manage to bring forth.

Durga, Pather Panchali

I agree with Ray's treatment of the everyday because the humanity he brings to his subjects is far more honest and true to life than stark realism, that takes an objective view and is empty of all sentiment. Real life, in my experience is not flavorless. All that we see and experience is processed through the stuff of our own thoughts, personalities and memories; it is tinged with the flavor of us. Life is subjective and our art would do well to reflect this truth.

All those,who haven't watched the Apu Trilogy,I can tell you that you have missed out on something in life. When I first read the English Adaptation of Pather Panchali, I still remember being so affected by his sister's death that I dropped the book and clung to my sister and wept for almost an hour.

Human beings trying to understand reality/life are akin to the six blind men touching an Elephant, each one has a different perception-collectively they are all partly right and yet individually they're wrong - at the same time they aren't even close to the real thing....Which is bigger than they can ever comprehend!