The Apu Trilogy

THE APU TRILOGY

Satyajit Ray

1955-1959

IDEA:  Beginning with his birth in a poor Bengal village, we follow Apu through life as he deals with everyday situations concerning family, education, and marriage.

BLURB:  Consisting of three standalone stunners, Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956), and The World of Apu (1959), the “Apu Trilogy” is a work of supreme elegance and humanity, a trilogy that, when seen together, makes a convincing argument that all a story really needs is characters we can emotionally invest in and relationships rooted in universal causes. Each film is a poignant continuation of the next, a carefully unfolding map that charts the journey of one Apu through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, taking us along with him through inevitable tragedy and triumph. The flow and feeling of Ray’s films is like silk – soft, sensuous, loving, never interested in frivolity or gaudiness, always calm and confident and genuine. Accompanied by Ravi Shankar’s majestically plaintive notes is filmmaking at its most visually lyrical, imagery that supports and echoes the growth of the characters. Trains whiz past small children in a tease of the modernity they can’t have; doorways are used to frame a mother and her son, highlighting the passage between home and the outside world; a woman’s sorrowful sigh is followed by crashing waves. Not for a second does one feel that any shot is unnecessary, that any moment is unused. It’s with Ray’s economy, empathy, and eye for poetry that Apu is someone we are privileged to spend time with.

Zazie dans le Métro

ZAZIE DANS LE MÉTRO   ***

Louis Malle

1960

IDEA:  Zazie, a young and precocious girl under the care of her uncle, is visiting Paris for the first time. When she gets there, the city turns into a surreal jungle gym of misadventures.

BLURB:  If the French New Wave was all about obliterating boundaries, giddily breaking rules, and redefining the elements that constitute a film, then Zazie dans le Métro is perhaps the defining French New Wave movie. Ironically so, then, as its hyperactive hall-of-mirrors absurdity primarily serves to mock the experimental craziness of the movement rather than follow it. Still, Malle’s film indefatigably commits to all the outré editing and camera tricks the New Wave was so fond of – and does it ever commit: not a second of Zazie’s candy-colored romp through Paris isn’t completely bonkers, peppered by a fire-juggling polar bear here, or by a cross-dressing uncle there. Scenes jump erratically, cuts violate continuity or coherency all together, and chase scenes unravel in fast motion, as if the Looney Tunes gathered up with Benny Hill and the Monty Python crew to take buckets of LSD. Though only around 95 minutes, this can all be exhausting, irritating even. But lunacy like this, full-fledged, unabashed, audacious nonsense of this flabbergasting magnitude, is not easy to come by. Zazie dans le Métro is many things, and at the top of the list is unique.