Page 105 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

92 The Apu Trilogy

This means that his films resist thoroughgoing analysis. Even
to describe the plot or story of Pather Panchali is a challenge,
with or without the aid of the published screenplay. There are
some turning points, of course, such as the birth of Apu, his
first day at school, the death of Indir, the arrival of the mon-
soon, the death of Durga, the return of Harihar, the departure
from the village. But the essence of the film lies in the ebb and
flow of its human relationships and in its everyday details and
cannot be reduced to a tale of events. For how can one narrate
the entire experience of childhood – the main subject of Pather
Panchali? Moreover, childhood that is seen not only from the
point of view of Apu, but also from those of his sister and his
two parents.
The film critic Robin Wood accurately acknowledged this in
his study of the Apu Trilogy when he wrote:

In the West, we are conditioned primarily either by the classic
American cinema with its taut narrative structures in which,
when a scene has made its point, we are carried swiftly on to
the next, or by the European ‘art’ cinema with its tendency
to intellectual thematic structures. We may feel, with Ray,
that we have already got the point when we are in fact con-
tinuing to miss it, for ‘the point’ may not be an extractable
thematic or narrative issue but the total experience a character
is undergoing.

The same idea was encapsulated by Ray’s father, the nonsense-
verse writer and illustrator Sukumar Ray, in an essay on
Rabindranath Tagore: ‘Where poetry is coextensive with life
itself, where art ceases to be the mere expression of imagina-
tive impulse, it is futile to attempt a comprehensive analysis.’ By
the standards of most directors, not very much happens in the
majority of Ray’s films – as John Huston sensed in 1954 when
he saw some rough cut of Pather Panchali – and yet each film
seems to embody the way of life of a section of Bengali society.

9/16/2010 9:08:29 PM
Robinson_Ch05.indd 92 9/16/2010 9:08:29 PM
Robinson_Ch05.indd 92