Satyajit Ray's APU TRILOGY restored: THE WORLD OF APU (1959)

[Chris Knipp]

Satyajit Roy: The World of Apu (1959) 4K digital restoration


SOUMITRA CHATTERJEE, SHARMILA TAGORE, THE WORLD OF APU

Ray's protagonist finally tested

The World of Apu (Apur Sansar), initially, at least, seems less sweeping than the first two parts of Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy and feels independent of them, more like a short story. Actually it's the greater part of the second of the two novels adapted for the trilogy, along with Aparajito. But the images of Apur Sansar, especially as shown off in the breathtaking new 4K digital restoration, have a greater depth and range than those of the first two films, and there turns out to be a range of experience and emotion to match them. This is, of course, the part in which Apu finally is, or truly becomes, a man. And though it's only a five-year period, we see him essentially living three different lives, becoming three different men. Apu is now wonderfully played by Soumitra Chatterjee, who looks like the god Krishna but also like a sad young man; he was to be a Ray regular. And we do ideally watch this after just seeing the first two films and feel it as building on all the experience they encompass.

At first this older, solider Apu is a somewhat idle young artist-intellectual, on his way to becoming a short story writer and a novelist but really very ignorant of the world. His friend Pulu (Swapan Mukherjee), who turns up, and will be central to the action, points out that if Apu is including a romantic interlude in his autobiographical novel, it will be pure fantasy, because he has had no romance or any women in his life.

Second -- the real short story part -- Pulu invites Apu to come with him to a family wedding out in the country and Apu has nothing to do so he goes. He likes rural life. This is a wealthy family living in a big impressive house by the water -- and the architectural and outdoor images are lovely, like paintings, or sweeping but delicate nineteenth-century photographs. The extraordinary outcome is that Apu becomes the groom, because the intended one arrives having gone quite mad, and folk beliefs to which the family adhere require the bride to marry somebody at this propitious hour, lest she be forever cursed and never marry at all. This middle section turns into a strange but beautiful romance. The lovely bride, Aparna (Sharmila Tagore), quickly adapts to her new husband and comes to Calcutta with Apu, quite willing to live in poverty. They quickly fall in love. Apu works as a clerk and tutor, but she wants no luxuries like a maid, and disapproves of their taking a carriage home from a play instead of public transportation. She is pregnant and goes back to the family village to have the baby. This love idol is wonderfully pure and sweet, but also quite natural. It doesn't feel idealized or saccharine. These first two sections are as charming and surprising as the last one will be bitter and disturbing -- though it ends on a note of hope and promise.

Tragedy comes, when Apu is about to go to the country to see Aparna: a messenger, whom he attacks, tells Apu that she has died in childbirth. Apu's world instantly disintegrates, and the third part begins, in which he becomes a bearded wanderer, angry, alienated and guility. He never even sees his son Kajal (Alok Chakravarty), who is a mischievous and ungovernable but pretty and probably bright boy, five years old when we first see him. Apu wanders around the country and works at odd jobs, sending money for Kajal, and is miserable: he throws away the manuscript of his novel, tossing the pages down a chasm.

Pulu appears again, looking for Apu at his father-in-law's estate, then seeking him near a mine in a remote district where he is now working. Their rather strange encounter, in a rocky clearing, is a transformative experience for Apu. He comes out with the truth: he blames Kajal and can't face him because he lived, and Aparna died giving birth to him. Pulu asks Apu to come back and take care of Kajal, who needs him. Apu refuses. Pulu says, then, he has done his duty, and walks away. Apu calls to him and runs after him, but Pulu is gone.

There is a spectral and strange quality about the final sequence: but really most of The World of Apu is spectral and strange. He turns up at his father-in-law's to meet, and claim, Kajal, but finds Kajal hostile and unwilling to believe Apu is his father. Apu has to use all his wiles to win Kajal's favor, and it's in vain -- until it isn't. Kajal has lived with the hope of having a father in Calcutta and if Apu can take him to that person, he will go.

The beauty of The World of Apu is that it has both sweep and intimacy; that it makes sense as the conclusion of a bildingsroman, but also reads as an astonishing and fresh short story, or series of them, since the portrait of the aimless young intellectual; the wedding trip, with its surprise outcome; the romance of the young married couple; and the bitter wandering and reclaiming of the son, are all engaging and rich separate narratives, though they flow quite seamlessly together.

Pauline Kael in her Devi review, which I referred to earlier (in discussing Pather Panchali), points out that The World of Apu "died at the box office," and was described condescendingly by Dwiight Macdonald (then a leading American film critic) as containing material too complex for Satyajit Ray to handle. She says people tended to prefer the idyllic primitive rural Bengal village world of the first film in the trilogy, Pather Panchali (about Apu's earlierst childhood); they were disapproving of the second and third films, but also turned around and held up the Apu Trilogy, which they'd underrated, as superior to anything Ray did after. But that was 1962, and now the Apu Trilogy is spoken of in such superlatives that the admiration clouds the understanding. We need for the exquisite and wonderfully clear Janus/Criterion 4K digital restoration of Ray's Apu Trilogy to lead viewers to watch these three film masterpieces with the eye and the mind as well as the heart, studying them closely, because there is much to be learned from them about the art of filmmaking as well as about life.

The World of Apu Benngali অপু বিশ্ব Apur sansar, 106 mins., debuted 1 May 1959 in India, and won numerous awards. Screened for this review in the news 2015 4K digital restoration of the entire Apu Trilogy which debuted in New York (at Film Forum) 8 May 2015, and thereafter began showing at other theaters throughout the US, including Landmark Theaters in the San Francisco Bay Area. It will be issued in Blu-ray by the Criterion Collection and Janus.