Wednesday, May 1, 2013

347. Apur Sansar

Apur Sansar
The World of Apu
1959
Directed by Satyajit Ray










So we are finally done with the Apu trilogy.  In hindsight, I probably should have watched all of them in one sitting.  Regardless, I am done and while it will be hard to limit my review to this one installment, I will do my best.

Apu is all grown up now and he is attempting to be a successful writer.  He gets married as a good deed after the initial groom is proven to have a mental disorder.  Good on Apu for continuing to enslave his cousin.  Anyway, they have a kid and because the film is part of this trilogy, death and despair are inevitable.

I am going to sound like a broken record here but I have the exact same things to say about this installment as I did the other ones.  The scenery is beautiful, the acting is average to quite good, and the cinematography is excellent.  However, I still thought the movie dragged sometimes and because it is so relentlessly depressing, it will never be a favorite.

The Book notes that the romance between Apu and Aparna is very sweet.  I, on the other hand, felt that their courtship was more creepy than beautiful.  I just felt sorry for Aparna that she was involuntarily married off to her poor cousin.

So I am glad to put this trilogy behind me and I will probably never watch it again. Still, it is recommended, along with tissues and ice cream.

RATING: ***--

Interesting Facts:

Sharmila Tagore was only fourteen when she made this film.

In 2005, Time listed this as one of the greatest films of all time.

A fan made trailer:


3 comments:

  1. At least it ends on a positive note. Maybe the only positive note in the entire trilogy. But that father-son moment is really sweet.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lol I think it was the only positive moment. Not worth the 342 minutes of misery before that though.

      Delete
  2. I liked this best of the three Apu films, mostly because of the charisma of his wife. I should have listened to the rest of you though and foreseen the obvious plot twist at the end of the second act.

    I thought the guy playing Apu was quite a poor actor though. It mattered less in the other films where he was a child or stoically stony-faced about everything, but here he was supposed to be expressing the full range of human emotions.

    ReplyDelete