that-a-way notebook

There is much to say about this scene from Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali so it will serve us well to pick an aspect of the scene and then branch out from there. Perhaps it would be best to talk about the mood of the scene as our focal point.

The mood conveys something intensely unsettling and full of unresolved contrasts. While this is a scene of great beauty, it is just as well a haunting one. It is a scene of fantastic innocence and youthful curiosity, yet at the same time it depicts something hugely ominous and tremendously mysterious. It is a scene of great sweetness, but it is brittle throughout.

What could be the meaning behind these great contrasts – the lyrical and the worrisome - coming together? Ultimately, this scene is about the foreboding nature of the future for these two characters. It is one of the finest examples of how to use the cinematic medium to foreshadow events to come by compelling your audience through the possibilities of cinematic storytelling rather than talking down to them.

Let us start with the music. As a stand-alone, this might be perceived as a typical nevertheless effective musical selection for communicating a peculiar and unnerving scene. But given the context of the film prior to this point in the narrative (about an hour in), this music is all the more striking and out of place. Until this point, Ravi Shankar's raga's have been literally rocking along to the characters and their situations, but only now do we find something that is more or less not a traditional, folksy tune. This is a cinematic underscore (and you could give a damn fine lecture on just Ray and Shankar's use of music in this film – the sound in this film is that complex).

So we start with this sound that is cinematic – no longer just 'a song' but an entry way into our scene – and the image of a power line, which then a pan down to what seems to be our protagonist, the young woman, Durga. And then we cut - to what? - her younger brother Apu, wading in the field pulling on cattle.

There are two points to emphasize within the collision of these first two shots. The first is that we begin with a heightened sense of contrast that will continue throughout the scene. This is the first instance of anything modern in the whole film and this directorial decision to withhold any hints that this film takes place within contemporary India only highlights the shock and disorientation that a contemporary audience in France or America or Britain would not understand but that would be a very real psychological presence for Ray's India of the 1950s (this film is from 1955). So, we have established - again in just two shots - the provincial and agrarian society where our two young wanderers are from, and another world – symbolized quite effectively by this obtrusive industrialized head of the future in all of its unsympathetic and uncertain fortitude.

The second thing to point out is that the scene is infused with all kinds of surrealistic qualities that are so well done we either don't notice them at all, or we think that they are the unfortunate errors of a film that took five years to make off and on when the financing was in order - oh yeah, and it was this guy's first film.

What are these elements? The most obvious – again - is the sound, what we could maybe call a sonic sort circuit. When Durga takes her first foot steps beneath the power lines, we hear these deep water plunges, and then Apu is shown pulling cattle from the wetlands. But then, is Durga also in the wetlands? But wait again, when are we not in the water and emerge on solid ground? This great use of audio soundtrack to play with the audience’s sense of space and time, is strongly and in the most literal sense unsettling. We do not know when the ground will be hard, or wet, or a few feet underwater.

This leads us to the next shot with the bad cut - or is it a bad cut? I think – again – here is an example of surrealist film traditions lending a creative hand to Ray's storytelling needs to produce some kind of meaning from the scene. Durga literally disappears from the frame as Apu listens to the power lines, who listens maybe more out of the fact that his big sister did it and then didn't say anything afterwards than his own curiosity. But what is the purpose behind this quick jump-cut where Durga suddenly disappears. Well, does it not foreshadow what happens to Durga twice more in the scene? The second time when she wanders off without Apu, and the third when she trips before the train arrives, and only Apu is there to watch it up-close.

The next obvious question to ask is, if it is done three times in this scene alone, possibly it foreshadows beyond this scene and carries meaning about the whole film. (NOTE: here would be a good time to mention that this is the first film in what is called "The Apu Trilogy" which as the title suggests includes two other films. However, this is the first scene where the argument can be made that although both of the characters are in the scene, Apu is the protagonist and not Durga. It is literally a passing of the role of the protagonist like the passing – or hurling – of the sugar cane from Durga to Apu.

Speaking of that sugar cane toss, this seems like an appropriate place in our discussion to talk about the way in which the camera style emphasizes this tense foreboding nature of the scene. It is a very difficult challenge for any director to create a haunting scene out of the day scene (NOTE: this is why I find merit in even a terrible film like the Stephen King film adaptation of "Children of the Corn" because it is just really difficult to direct something in the ful light of day that also puts your mind on edge. A better film that does this is Junebug). So, the simplest way to explain the cinematic achievement of this scene in Pather Panchali insofar as it is an incredibly disturbing one is to notice the way in which the characters are taken further and further away from the foreground and are gradually eclipsed by their environments in the foreground. It seems simple but its effects are numerous. What this does is allow us to follow the character not only physically but psychologically, because just as Apu is wandering on the edge of being afraid that he is lost, we who are watching the screen do not know what the camera is going to pass next. Let's just go through them one by one:

First, it's the tall field grasses. The wispy grass – accompanied by this overwhelmingly noisy wind – is both majestic and menacing, the way the frame allows the stalks to totally envelope Apu - to literally take over the character. We become almost claustrophobic - even though its so beautiful - and the deep-focus lens gives us so much spatial information that we totally empathize with Apu's line of vision and observation that Durga is really is not there - not anywhere. It's fascinating and yet potentially really traumatizing to have a big sister just disappear.

Next we see fallen grains in front of the camera. These are a little over exposed but nevertheless, they add to the surreal, dreamlike quality of the scene. And then, suddenly relieving the tension of the previous shots, Apu appears in the foreground. But then - no he isn't. Out of nowhere, or out of the camera, the sugar cane is hurled at him. Again, to emphasize the point in this very dualistic and effective way, the camera style remains psychologically motivated and allows us to feel both startled, because we were wondering what the heck was going to pass in front of us and we sure didn't see that one coming – and neither did Apu – but also just like Apu, we are simultaneously relieved that his sister is has not abandoned us. But - and this is the key to this brilliant scene - what would it feel like if she did?

The scene would be less successful without the props: Durga's sugar cane and Apu's D.I.Y crown. The crown – the residue of a child’s fantasy he constructed in this other marvelous scene two DVD chapters earlier – makes it clear that the tension between the nerve-wracking and the wonderful, the ominous and the innocent, originates from the filmmakers perception of the two characters and what they mean both to each other and apart. Durga’s sugar cane is arguably quite emblematic of the two-sided quality of the whole scene, as well as a pretty fine way of describing the mood: sweet and brittle. Narratively, the sugar cane is what allows for brother and sister to unite, affirms our question for Durga’s – is she watching out for her little brother. The Answer is yes, but it’s a kind of tough love. And the sugar cane – as I said before is a kind of rite of passage within their little brother and sister world, as this Apu’s scene not Durgas. After Apu sticks some wet wood in his mouth, his questions resonate. He’s no longer just doing what his sister does. He’s actually curious – full of wonder and awe.

Right at the start of the conclusion of the scene, when the two kids are crouched down together, we have another technical glitch, a sonic short circuit. This time, when Durga speaks nothing comes out - something is said but not heard.

Enter locomotive stage right. Ray set this scene up so well beginning with the power lines, that we think of science fiction when this train comes. It’s like a time machine, out of the past, cutting through the present, and heading into the future. Before the train cuts through the present, Durga disappears for a third time tripping on some grass, making us all think of Achilles. The camera tries to find her, and cannot. So we turn to the exited Apu running as fast as he can towards the roaring, smoke-spewing train, black as the night, speeding – agagin – in the foreground it comes rushes past only Apu. Why only Apu?

The scene began: powerlines and cut to Durgah. Then it ends: Apu cut to train. It is as if Ray is pondering, What would it mean if Apu were allowed to see what the future holds but not his older sister Durga?