The Painful Tragedy in the Film, Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)

Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road), which was filmed by Satyajit Ray in 1955, stands out as one of the notable landmarks in history of Indian cinema. As a neo-realistic cinema, other than previous Indian films that always focus on one main character, Pather Panchali depicts images of a group of characters-a family living in a small Indian village. By means of its locations, shooting, editing, music, sound, structure of events, human behaviors, and some other aesthetic treatment techniques, the film successfully narrates a tragedy that happens to the family.

The tragedy is depicted so realistically that makes audience pained. As the first film in The Apu Trilogy, Pather Panchali mainly tells the story of Apu's family. Harihar dreams of becoming a poet and playwright. He is optimistic and hopeful. However, the reality is that he earns little money a month so that it is hard to keep a family of four. His wife Sarbajaya manages all the household affairs and takes care of their daughter, Durga and Harihar's elderly cousin, Indir Thakrun.

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After the son, Apu is born, their resources become more limited. Because of the pressure of poverty, Sarbajaya becomes offensive and never loses her self-esteem. She drives away Indir and tries to educate Durga, who is blamed by neighbor for stealing. Even they don't have money to renovate their house, Durga and Apu have easy and happy life. Harihar also strives to support the family. However, one day, unexpectedly, Indir is discovered dead in the village. Tragedies come one after another.

After Harihar goes to the city to earn money, Durga catches a cold. Their house is too weak to offense rain and winds, after getting worse and worse, Durga died. It is too heavy for the rest of the family to bear, Harihar and Sarbajaya decide to leave this village and start a new life.

Pather Panchali does a great job on choosing filming location and arranging sets to manifest where the tragedy starts. It is important for a film to choose proper locations to shoot and establish realistic-looking sets to make audience get into the scenes that the film wants to show. Most of the scenes in the film are shot in a small village. It is a backward and small village. People live close to others and know each other well. It could be seen that Haripar's house is little far from others'. In the beginning of the film, we could see that after getting a guava from neighbor's orchard, Durga runs through the big woods and then goes back to a house that is simple furnished and decorated. The yard is big, but it is nearly bare. Sarbajaya could only squat about the fire and cook. These give a hint foreshadowing later developments that they need money to renovate the house and Durga dies because of the broken house.

Except showing the background of the family, the village is also very natural and beautiful. Accompanying with brisk music and birdcall, audience could feel the poetic essence in scenes. Such beautiful scenes make strong comparison with the thesis of tragedy of the film.

The combination of applications of sound and human behaviors in the film are artful to express characters' emotions, especially in twists and turns. To give an example to demonstrate the point, I want to focus on the analysis of the plot that Durga is accused of stealing a string of beads, Sarbajaya is too angry to control herself, so she teaches Durga a lesson. After Sarbajaya steps close in Durga, characters' voices disappear, instead, intense drumbeat starts. Sarbajaya goes to catch Durga's hair in such drastic background sound. Silence of characters makes audience pay more attention on human behaviors. Audience could see extreme angry facial expression on Sarbajaya's face and painful facial expression on Durga's face. Although we cannot hear Durga's groans. We could easily know how much she is suffering because of their actions, intense background sounds, and afraid facial expressions on Indir and Apu's faces. Besides, the poor environment that is a littery yard also helps to strength the conflict. Another example is the scene that when Harihar comes back to home from the city, he brings some money and a new sari for daughter, but he hears that her daughter already died.

People's sounds disappear after Sarbajaya crying. Thus we could not know how Sarbajaya tells her husband such a bad news, all we could see is Harihar feels strange to see Sarbajaya crying, then he tries to comfort, and Sarbajaya says something, Harihar is broken down and cries. The dramatic change of Harihar's emotions is magnified in sad Indian traditional music. Audience will get touched when they see parents are crying for their dead young daughter, but without the sound of cry, especially the poor mother holds the new sari while crying. Removing characters' voices makes audience tend to focus on characters' expressions and behaviors so that audience get more emotional shocks on these crucial plots in the film. Therefore, the infection of the tragedy becomes more powerful to hit audience's strings of heart. The realistic depiction of the film becomes more successful.

Music also plays an important role in the film. At the very start of the film, we could hear melodious music with traditional Indian feelings. Indian traditional music and intense drumbeat are two biggest part of background music in the film. Using traditional Indian music emphasize the Indian cultural factors. Otherwise, traditional Indian music that applies sitar and bamboo flute is slow and soothing. Such an exotic and mysterious style conveys exquisite and blue feelings to audience. Thus it could comply with sad scenes. Within music, the film keeps natural sounds, like animals' calls and noise. When Apu and Durga go to woods, water, and field, we could hear real sounds in the nature. It makes the film more inartificial and realistic. For drumbeat, the film uses it to make conflicts more intense. Correct application of do traditional music and drumbeat alternately makes the tragic expression of the film more powerful. The shooting and editing techniques are pretty simple and easy understanding in this film.

The camera is like just recording something happened in some place in the world. The editing also tells the story in a simple and straightforward way. Audience watches vicissitude of Apu's family for several years. In some shots, the film even could reveal that it does not have mature techniques like many other famous movies. For example, when the film features a view of Apu or Durga's back while they are running, the camera just moves from one side to another, instead of using 180-degree angle or moving very smooth. Even though, it could also be advantages of the film because a neo-realistic film do not need to many artful techniques on shooting and editing. Simple techniques make the film more real to audience. Even, simple techniques could be part of means of artistic expression of this film. Another thing worthy mentioning is that the casts of the film are all amateur actors. It also could be awarded marks for a neo-realistic film. All the efforts to make the film realistic are awarded marks for structuring a real-looking tragedy.

Chinese famous author and revolutionist Luxun had said, “The real tragic is to tear the most precious thing apart just to show to others.” The true feeling about the tragedy in Apu's family is not only because of how well the neo-realistic style takes effect, but also because the strong comparison of nice things and sad events happened in the film. This is credited to structuring of events and information.

Although poverty makes their life confined and stressful, Apu and Durga never lose their innocent and pure. When the man who sales candies walks by their house, the sister and the brother feel simply happy. They don't think too much about money, they are so desirable for candies. They are so simple-hearted and dovelike that nobody knows what will come to them in the future. After Apu is born, Durga helps mother to take care of her brother. Even when Apu opens her box and takes tinfoil to make prince's crown, she still laughs away after being angry for a little while. Thus, it is melancholic that Durga gets a cold that causes her death because she and Apu go to the field and have happy time in the rain. When Durga is lying on the bed because of the cold, she smiles and tells Apu that she will get better and takes him to see the train, which is Apu does not see last time. This sentence is a flag that represents that Durga may not be possible to take Apu to see the train. Going back to the beautiful scene that Apu and Durga walks across the reeds to try to see the train, it seems that destiny are too cruel to bring the tragedy to the brother and the sister.

Reviewing the scene that Harihar goes back to home. He could not stop laughing when he is back. He is so excited that talks endlessly about what he buys for the family. Few months ago, Sarbajaya also has similar emotion when she receives Harihar's letter that says he already gets a job and is able to earn money then go back home. Sarbajaya is really looking forward to her husband's return. However, the affairs of the world are inconstant, things change, Durga's death takes away the family's hope. Relating the couple's previous reactions to a new life, audience will feel heartbroken to Durga's death. Such structure of events and information makes people feel regretful and upset. Each event produces the next. Comparison of previous nicety and later tragedy takes notice of ruthless reality.

Comparison of the outside environment and characters in the film also emphasizes the conflict and strengths realistic tragedy color. The scene in the stormy night that is raining and blowing hard outside their house is the climax of the film. Durga's cold develops to fever and becomes more severe. Sarbajaya stays by her daughter and becomes nervous. Audience could see heavy rains, strong winds, and thunders through the hole on the wall. As an extension of audience's sight, the hole uses to give audience imaginary space to reality. However, at that time, all audience could see is terrible situation and unwished incoming result. The house is shaking and the window could not defense the storm. Comparing to dynamic environment, characters are relatively quiet-Durga is groaning slightly on the bed, and Sarbajaya is begging and waiting for her daughter to get better. Getting here, audience have a foreboding that Durga is close to leave because the comparison of dynamic condition of the outside world and static condition of the characters magnify characters' struggle and pain.

In addition, the black and white color of the whole film helps to build realistic feelings. The change between strong and weak contrast in black-white color also helps to stand out emotional expressions. In the scene at the stormy night, there is an impressive close-up shot, which features Sarbayaja's eyes. In such a dark environment, there is a clear distinction between black and white in her eyes. The shot that features such a hopeless and painful eyes will give audience emotional impulse. Simplex color could easier to invoke people's subjective consciousness. Audience could go through Sarbayaja's eyes to experience her emotional surge.

By all means of techniques and structuring that are talked above, although the film is adapted by a novel, which is fictional, the tragic story is filmed so real. Audience may think that is there any similar stories in reality happened in India or happened in somewhere around the world? At least the sorrow that a poor rural Indian family takes to audience is true and really sets people thinking. It seems true that “the cinema's overwhelming desire to see, to analyse, its hunger for reality, is an act of concrete homage towards other people, towards what is happening and existing in the world. And, incidentally, it is what distinguishes 'neorealism' from American cinema” (Zavattini 53). Pather panchali, as a neo-realistic film, brings to audience such a feeling: it is not a true story, but it seems true; it is not a true tragedy, but it makes people sigh with heart-struck emotions.