Page 122 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

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Aparajito:

Critique

Of the three films in the Apu Trilogy, Aparajito tends to be
the least admired – both in India and in the West, despite
its winning the top prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1957.
When it was first released in Calcutta the year before this
award, it was a box-office failure, unlike Pather Panchali and
The World of Apu. However, Aparajito was the most admired of
the trilogy by Ray’s fellow Bengali directors Ritwik Ghatak
and Mrinal Sen. Sen explained why in the Calcutta Statesman
in the 1980s:

In Aparajito, Ray’s unorthodox approach to the analysis and
unfolding of the relationship between a mother and her only
son growing into adulthood is, indeed, a revelation. Th e focus
is on the slow but inevitable disintegration of a seemingly unal-
terable relationship, with constant stresses and strains acting
within, and the eventual discovery of the son’s new moorings

in a metropolitan setting. The entire process, as I watch the

film, has its ups and downs, its complexities, its inexorabili-
ties which are ruthless and yet so much an integral part of us
and our time. ... Honestly, from none of Ray’s other fi lms did

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