Aparajito

Aparajito – India – 1956 – English Subtitles – Drama – Black & White – 105 Min. Director, Satyajit Ray.

The second part of Satyajit Ray’s famous Apu trilogy, Aparajito picks up where the first film leaves off, with Apu and his family having moved away from the country to live in the bustling holy city of Varanasi (then known as Benares). As Apu progresses from wide-eyed child to intellectually curious teenager, eventually studying in Kolkata, we witness his academic and moral education, as well as the growing complexity of his relationship with his mother. This tenderly expressive, often heart-wrenching film, which won three top prizes at the Venice Film Festival, including the Golden Lion, not only extends but also spiritually deepens the tale of Apu.naki Sengupta), near the Ganges River.

Aparajito (aka The Unvanquished) is both grander in scale (it moves back and forth from seaside tenements to country estates to a university in Calcutta) and more inwardly focused, a quiet meditation on maturity, modernization, and loss. Daniel Barnes Dare Daniel

…Aparajito…drew criticism for its refusal to create an idealized mother-son relationship. Sarah Boslaugh Playback:stl

…eloquently dramatizes oppositions: tradition versus invention; religion versus science; adolescence versus adulthood. Josh Larsen LarsenOnFilm