As an anthropologist who is a film buff, I'm always fascinated by films with solid ethnographic content. Ironically, I must confess that I had never seen Pather Panchali completely. The several times I started to watch the film, seemingly something arose during those few times and I never got very far into it. However, now in my senescent years, I finally got around to seeing it after realizing that I never had taken the time to see it. Having read about the trilogy and about Satyajit Ray, I look back and wonder why of all the classics I've seen, I'd overlooked these works of Ray. Maybe it was the trauma I experienced 50 years ago at UC Berkeley while taking a year of Sanskrit but I doubt it. I'll only say now I must have been saving it for a treat during my later years. And, what a treat! The film has a languid quality and moves slowly, listfully. The imagery is diffused due to in part the quality of the film but the eye of the camera misses nothing from shots of nature to a kitten stumbling and licking itself, to the old Auntie brushing away flies from her food. The starkness of their poverty does not affect the world of a little boy as it does his frustrated mother and sister. His father, a kind-hearted dreamer, seems resigned to his lot and is willing to take less to keep his sense of life and desire in balance. All of this life trajectory is classic Indian and Ray shows us to us through the camera's eye in a way that is moving, joyous and profound. This is their world and Ray lets us see it through their eyes. Akira Kurasawa called Ray a genius and we guess we could say, it took one to know one.
Review of Pather Panchali
