Apur Panchali (2014)

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This is one brilliant movie. Kousik Ganguly is really making his mark. Relating two lives - a fictional and a real without overdoing it and the same time being honest and yet capturing every emotion.... Just amazing.... One important thing.... Watch the Apu Trilogy of Satyajit Ray before watching this movie cause you won't be able to enjoy the emotions and nostalgia fail to understand the greatness of this movie.... It's really sad how cinema forgets the talented childhood actors who don't try to get into the world of movies after growing up.... They deserve acknowledgement.... To conclude is a #MustWatch an should not be missed at any cost. And to the Apu Trilogy fans, it is not a reboot. You people should definitely watch this....

Just watching this film and writing a critique on it without having watched all the three films of 'Apu Trilogy' would be considered an impertinent move and a Himalayan mistake to boot. 'Apur Panchali' can be considered one of the best films in Bengali cinema and also the world over. It being not just a rehash of the reputed trilogy, the film explores quite a few precious moments of mainly the famous child actor (Subir Banerjee) of 'Pather Panchali' and how his life was meant to develop some 'uncanny' parallels with the story of the three films. Kaushik Ganguly has touched upon the very tender issues that have gone unheeded until now.A child who had became famous and came to be known to the whole world as the child Apu, later on went into the unknown, cooped-up and covert depths of personal life, which, however, did not keep abreast with him till the very end. Almost like Apu, Subir Banerjee also lost the members of his family in a sequence and was left alone and aloof - just like a deliberate social outcast. He was living life on his own terms until when, quite abruptly, Arka searches Subir out and coaxes him to attend an honorary ceremony for one of the most celebrated child actors of all time. Here, Subir betrays his listless and short temper gradually engendered by the buffets of fortune and life drawn somewhat by The Almighty from the 'Apu Trilogy', it seems. But Arka makes Subir realize the latter's real worth. In the way, childless Subir gets beck a son, fatherless Arka gets back a father and we get back the child actor of 'Pather Panchali.'The story of the film is told in a way that places the reel-and-the-real parallels very subtly. While the trilogy's scenes are shown we relieve the moments, but we turn very sympathetic when they are reverberated in the child actor's real life. Parambrata assays the character of younger Subir and Parno assays Ashima. They act like real people. There's one moment when Parno says ways to look after himself while Ashima would be staying away from Apu. The director keeps things very simple which raises the level of the film to great heights, seen in few directors in Bengal. Apart from the director, the writer Kaushik also stands firm and high above most of the playwrights in the celluloid arena.Sirsha Roy's cinematography touched upon the softest parts of an artiste's life that tell upon our lachrymal glands. Bodhaditya Banerjee has also done no less commendable job. Art direction by Mridul Baidya and Saswati Karmakar stands par excellence. Without it the film would not have got it's archival look. The excellent music that wafts throughout the movie makes one feel nostalgic and catches up with the original films of the trilogy to not a less extent.To sum up, it's a film not to be given a miss at any cost, whatsoever.

First I want to praise Koushik Ganguly for his effort of bringing Apu again in the world of movies. We all know Apu as a character in Satyajit Ray's "Pather Panchali". But in the movie we can see that Apu is not only a character, he is a boy, a boy we can find in every corner of our villages who grew up among the paddy fields and struggle in their lives when they lose their close ones. Mr. Ganguly also focused on the life of a famous child actor who was once famous but with time gets forgotten and with that the effect of that past fame in his life. But here Subir Banerjee's(the actor who played Apu in "Pather Panchali") life is compared with the life of Satyjit Ray's Apu by showing few clips of "Pather Panchali" and "Apur Sansar" in the movie. Mr. Ganguly brilliantly compared their lives and surprisingly their lives were same in multiple aspects. And also hats off to the actors specially Parambrata Banerjee who played the role of young Subir Banerjee. Of all the scenes in the movie I liked the scene when Subir mistakenly enters in the film set of a movie when he saw a child actor acting in the movie. The fact that he still misses the famous child actor in himself was brilliantly represented. Also I like to mention the scene where he hears the news of his wife's suicide in his Boss' telephone. But i felt that the representation of present day Subir Banerjee was not that good(considering the overall quality of the film). And the transition between the scenes of this film and "Pather Panchali" could have been done in a slight better way. In the end I want to congratulate Koushik Ganguly for successfully making a film based on a new and interesting concept in a brilliant way and setting a milestone in the world of movies(specially Bengali movies).

The beautification of this movie has increased by showing three different but related stories simultaneously and I am pretty sure it was a very tough job to edit a movie like this. As the name reveals, the story is about the forgotten hero of Pather Panchali's "Apu" whose real life name is Subir Banerjee. It shows how a movie changed his life and the uncanny similarity between Apu and Subir Banerjee.All actors of this movie did awesome job, it is hard to compare them, Ardhendu, Param, Parno, all of them were superb. But the most beautiful part was the story telling process, kudos to Kaushik Ganguly for such a movie and personally I feel this movie should be considered as a landmark in bengali movie history.