Pather Panchali (1955)

Indian Giver

by Jeffrey M. Anderson

I have a long and strange history with Pather Panchali. In my sophomore year in high school, my history teacher gave the class a list of topics on which to do a paper. I got pretty lucky, and snagged "the film industry of India" before anyone else could. I set about my research, and, not surprisingly, couldn't find much of anything in the Sonora libraries. (Now I know that India's film industry is one of the world's largest, and is very regimented, very formulaic, catering to a country of mostly uneducated people. I've read many articles about it since high school.)

Whenever I looked up "India" and "Film," one name popped up; Satyajit Ray. And when I looked up Satyajit Ray, one film popped up; Pather Panchali. Unfortunately, I was in Sonora, and the film was unavailable for rent. (I would have had a hard time tracking it down even in San Francisco, actually). So I did a poor paper about Satyajit Ray, and Pather Panchali, never having seen the film, barely knowing what it was about. And the worst part was that I spelled "Pather" as "Panther."

Finally, in college, at SFSU, I saw a battered 16mm print in class, but it left me uninspired. To this day, I can't recall a single frame.

Then, in 1997, the movie was showing at the San Francisco International Film Festival, selected and introduced by local director Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff, Henry and June). My wife and I got tickets, but later she found she couldn't go. I couldn't think of anyone else who might appreciate the film as much as Lara, but not to let the ticket go to waste, I brought my friend Bill. Not only did Bill find it boring, the whole screening was pretty awful. There was some Hollywood blockbuster playing next door and rumbling the walls. I sat next to some poor dumb bastard who couldn't breathe and was making wheezing and grunting noises as well as comments to himself through the whole movie. I also sat behind the one person in the whole front half of the theatre who sat perfectly rigid and erect for the whole movie, forcing me to lean to the right for the whole movie. Mr. Kaufman was uninspiring as well. He said "uh" about 500 times in his opening comments. He clearly didn't want to be there.

After all that, though, there were some moments in the film of pure magic that swept me away. The actor who plays Apu, Subir Bannerjee, is very charming. I remember Apu's sister dancing in the rain, Apu finding the stolen beads, the wonderful elderly aunt gumming at the stolen fruit, the puppies and kittens playing in the yard. The next day, I read an excerpt from Ray's biography in Roger Ebert's Book of Film. Ray perfectly described the experience of making a movie, and why it was worth it. That made it all feel good.

Rating: 3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)