Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Our pride aside, it is not really surprising that sections of the West reacted the way they did to "Pather Pachali" (or "Song of the Little Road"). The poverty stricken, dreary lifescape of rural India - must have been an unpleasant shock to many Western viewers/critics.
If one watches the movie today, 50 odd years since its release, the characters embroiled in a life or death battle (literally) for shelter, a square meal - does come as a jolt. In fact when I re-watched the movie a few months ago, to be honest, I sometimes cringed. The world of ipod's, high speed broadband and square mile malls, begs disbelief of lives steeped in penury, of the oppression of existence and of aspiration blunted by destitution.
However, having said that, Francois Truffaut's comment, "I don't want to see a movie of peasants eating with their hands" is a reflection more of his insensible insularity than of the movie.
Pather Pachali - The Song of the Little Road is a metaphor for man's rite of passage. The way the world you know starts to give away. Roots begin to stealthily putrefy life. Life incarcerated by inertia. One has to give it all up and move. Leave in order to live. To abandon all you know and to clutch at the unaccustomed.
Its the story of all our lives, the family who left the village for the city. The son who went to America, and the one who came back. The migrant who crossed the border. The peasant who gave up the till. The man who donned the workers uniform, and the one who relinquished it for ever. The family who moved to the leafy suburb, and the one which moved to the loft conversion down town.
Some Journeys are aspirational while others are escapes. Often there is only an one way ticket available.
Journey's heralds new beginnings, but they also often... shut the book.
Labels: Cinema, Free Form, Moments and Memories, World and us
