In his most famous works the
Apu trilogy and DISTANT THUNDER, the characters and those around them go
through terrible loss due to man-made famine.
In PATHER PANCHALI, the first installment of the Apu trilogy, Apu, the
boy hero, loses his sister after episodes of grinding poverty. In APARAJITO, the
second installment, he loses first his
father then his mother while trying hard and achieving good grades in
school. In APUR SANSUR, the third instalment,
he loses his young wife but that film ends with a note of hope as he takes the
young son he hasn’t known into his arms and away with him to a new life.
Ray’s secret is twofold 1.) Knowing
when to stop piling on the unfortunate events on his characters – Too much
would seem like overkill and resilience in the face of overblown tragedy would
not be believable. 2.) Making a clear, out front message that is total in every
aspect of the story, that the human spirit (and by spirit I mean nothing
supernatural, only our core, what makes us who we are) is flexible and can
repair itself and bounce back from everything.
Of course, it’s all couched
in the portrayal of a hard life in a third world country, India in this case,
the India of 40 or 50+ years ago. Ray is
as much a realist as Vittorio De Sica but he is nowhere near complete in his
destruction of characters hopes and leaving them stranded in their hopelessness
no matter how realistic that is. There
is always a glimmer of hope after moments of tragedy in Ray’s films and that
glimmer is the magnification of the human spirit.
Otherwise, how would people
get through lives in poverty, in overcrowding, in horrible conditions knowing
nothing else but each other, some kind of religious faith, and overriding
humanism unspoiled by Western cynicism, the providence of spoiled materialists.
I think you could even call
his endings, happy endings in some cases because the potential of the human spirit
is shown to be great even when it faces tremendous loss and personal tragedy.
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