Page 5 - THE CHANGING WORLD OF RAY

those familiar with Ray’s creation’ (2000: 16-17, 26-31)

films, the opening sequence . The curiosity of the child is

of Agantuk feels as if the illustrated in Pather Panch-

boy-trickster Apu, from the ali’s train sequence, in which

director’s world-famous de- while the arrival of the train

but Pather Panchali (‘Song scares Apu’s older sister

of the Little Road’ 1955), Durga (Runki Banerjee),
grew up into an ‘anthropolo-

gist’. Ray’s unique authority Apu’s curious eyes

is aesthetically expressed are wide open in wonder-

with the observant realist ment, embracing the mar-

style of his camera, the Apu’s vels of this fast-moving ma-

Eye (as I will call it), which chine, whose metallic sounds
he first introduced in his de- rip the peaceful countryside

but Pather Panchali in 1955. apart. His curiosity is ac-

The Apu’s Eye refers to a companied by an innocent,

particular way of positioning emotional detachment, as

the camera from the point illustrated in the end of the

of view of a child (famous- film by his playful realiza-
ly adopted in Steven Spiel- tion of his sister death.

berg’s ET). Cooper (2000) In Agantuk, the Apu’s Eye

exclaimed that the use of point of view is given to Sa-

the Apu’s Eye illustrates the tyaki (Bikram Bhattacha-

aesthetic value of the epiph- raya), the Stranger’s neph-

any of wonderment (camat- ew, who remains indifferent

kara) according to the clas- to his parents’ worries about
sical Hindu aesthetical form his uncle’s sudden appear-

of rasa (‘flavours/ moods/ ance to a ‘home’ that is not

modes of affect’). These his anymore. This old uncle

moods refer to the emotional and the young nephew share

‘comprehension of the direct- a paradoxical alienation

ly experienced “inward life” from, as the means of en-

that all art conveys’, as ‘a gaging with, the world. This
guiding principle behind the self-alienating condition