Remembering Satyajit Ray's best films on his 97th birth anniversary, from the Apu trilogy to Aranyer Din Ratri
A look at Satyajit Ray’s nine most important cinematic masterpieces.
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Satyajit Ray’s most well-known and argaubly best work came in a poignant meditation on childhood, coming of age, and everyday life in Pather Panchali (1955).
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Picking up where Pather Panchali left off, Aparajito (1956) finds Apu turn from an impressionable child to an intellectually curious teenager.
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The third and final film of The Apu Trilogy, Apur Sansar (1959) takes a look at Apu’s adult life as he tried to make it as a writer.
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One of Ray’s defining films, Jalsaghar (1958) depicts the decline of a pre-independence era zamindar and patron of classical music, who desperately tries to cling on to a fading way of life.
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Mahanagar (1963) is a critique of two clashing value systems between the older and younger generations — tradition and modernity.
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Nayak (1966) is a pyschologically complex character study of a popular film star on the brink of his first flop.
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Based on a story by Rabindranath Tagore, Charulata (1964) is an aesthetically ambitious film that revolves around a lonely wife and her workaholic husband.
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In Aranyer Din Ratri (1970), four bachelors try to escape the bustle of the city by taking a hedonistic holiday in the forest.
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One of Ray’s more controversial films for its alleged anti-Hindu bias, Devi (1960) is a stinging criticism of religion — of orthodoxy and liberalism.
