The Apu Trilogy, directed by Satyajit Ray

Criterion's poster for the re-relase of Ray's Apu Trilogy. If you go, see them in the order they were made, preferably in one day. Sure, it's a marathon, but worth every minute. For Boston folks, the Kendall Square Cinema has scheduled them to play back to back, with a 45 minute break between parts 2 and 3, just enough time for a sandwich and a beer at The Friendly Toast!

“Never having seen a Satyajit Ray film is like never having seen the sun or the moon.” 

—AKIRA KUROSAWA

Criterion's restored 4K theatrical re-release of Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy ranks among the top cinematic events of the year. The films are deeply human and tell a timeless, universal story in the simplest of ways. The degree of authenticity here might lead one to believe they're watching a type of ethnographic or anthropological documentary when, in fact, we are talking about a filmmaking style closer to the Italian neo-realists (I'm thinking specifically of DeSica's Bicycle Thieves). It's director Ray's care, his empathy for his characters, their lives marked by joy as well as tragedy, that leaves you feeling so emotionally fulfilled; as if you'd met and befriended someone and watched them grow. 

A still from the now legendary scene where Apu and his sister run through the fields to catch a glimpse of the future; a train in the distance.

Despite having been made over half a century ago Ray's trilogy continues to resonate with audiences. It does this by telling a story that people everywhere will recognize, to some degree, as their own.

Among the themes the film touches upon: the sacrifice parents make for their children, the status of women in India and depression, the struggle between the agrarian-based life of the past versus the arrival of manufacturing and industry, and the debate over what to embrace: science or religion. All of this delivered with a degree of cinematic poetry rarely seen these days. Watching the trilogy was like discovering cinema for the first time. I can't think of higher praise. 

Apu's childhood is a mix of hardship and wonder. His simple life in a remote rural Indian village will end as the boy and his family leave for the city.

Apu as a young student, struggles with leaving his family for the uncertainty of adult life in the city.

Apu as an adult, hardened by loss and the inevitable passage of time, yet hopeful nonetheless.

From the Criterion presskit: Two decades after its original negatives were burned in a fire, Satyajit Ray’s breathtaking milestone of world cinema rises from the ashes in a meticulously reconstructed new 4K restoration. The Apu Trilogy brought India into the golden age of international art-house film, following one indelible character, a free-spirited child in rural Bengal who matures into an adolescent urban student and finally a sensitive man of the world. These delicate masterworks—Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road), Aparajito (The Unvanquished), and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)—based on two books by Bibhutibhusan Banerjee, were shot over the course of five years, and each stands on its own as a tender, visually radiant journey. They are among the most achingly beautiful, richly humane movies ever made—essential works for any film lover.

SATYAJIT RAY BIOGRAPHY Satyajit Ray was an only child, born in 1921 into a creative, intellectual family of Brahmos—members of a Christian-influenced Hindu movement—in Kolkata. His grandfather, Upendrakishore Ray, was a renowned writer, composer, and children’s magazine founder, and his father, Sukumar Ray, was a writer and illustrator, a household name for his nonsense verse. Satyajit had an unsurprising early facility with the arts, both musical and visual. His father died when he was not yet three, and he lived with his mother and an uncle in the southern part of Kolkata, where he taught himself to read Western classical music and discovered Hollywood movies. After finishing college, beginning in 1940, Ray studied art for two and a half years in Santiniketan, at the university founded by the great Bengali intellectual, writer, and artist Rabindranath Tagore, who would become one of the most important influences in his life. Returning to Kolkata, Ray found work as a graphic artist at a British-run advertising agency and a Bengali-run publishing house, and cofounded the Calcutta Film Society, where he and other film lovers watched mostly European and Hollywood movies and engaged in lengthy addas (coffeehouse conversations) about what was missing from Indian cinema, which was still primarily a Bollywood landscape. While working full-time, Ray began writing screenplays on the side, for his own enjoyment and occasionally for pay, deepening his understanding of cinematic storytelling. In 1949, Ray met the great French director Jean Renoir, who was location scouting in Kolkata for The River. When Renoir asked if he had a film idea of his own, Ray described the story of Pather Panchali, a novel by Bibhutibhusan Banerjee for which Ray had once designed woodcut illustrations and that struck him as being highly cinematic in nature. Renoir encouraged Ray’s love of film and his pursuit of the project. In 1950, Ray and his wife, Bijoya, moved to England, where he would work at his advertising agency’s London office. During those six months, the couple saw ninety-nine films, including Vittorio De Sica’s recent neorealist masterpiece Bicycle Thieves. It was this film that had the strongest impact on Ray, as it led him to the discovery that one could make a film with nonprofessionals, on location, largely outdoors, and on a shoestring budget. In late 1950, on the boat back to Kolkata, he wrote a first treatment for Pather Panchali. In 1955, after three years of shooting and editing that was intermittent due to a lack of financing, Ray completed his debut film, which, after legendary screenings in New York and Cannes, officially put him on the map during the golden age of art-house cinema; with Pather Panchali, Ray took his place alongside Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, and Akira Kurosawa as one of the most important international filmmakers. He went on to close out the 1950s with a string of masterpieces, including the two films that rounded out The Apu Trilogy, Aparajito (1956) and Apur Sansar (1959), and The Music Room (1958). Over the course of his thirty-six-year career, Ray would direct twenty-eight features. He also designed posters and composed musical scores for many of his own films. He won awards at the world’s major film festivals, including Cannes, Venice, and Berlin. In 1992, thanks to © Marc Riboud/Magnum Photos THE APU TRILOGY 7 JANUS FILMS a campaign led by several Hollywood heavyweights, including Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him an honorary lifetime achievement Oscar, which he accepted from a hospital bed in Kolkata, where he had been admitted for a heart condition. Less than a month later, Ray died at the age of seventy. His work remains an inspiration to filmmakers around the world.

Satyajit Ray at work.