Criterion doesn’t always release linked films in the same set, but the Apu films work best when viewed together to examine how aesthetic and tonal choices in one film deepen and contradict those of the other two.
Ray’s approach extends to the relationship of each film in the trilogy to each other. Instead, he places the tragic with the idyllic to grapple with the contradictory nature of life, never ceding fully to any one emotion to better study natural responses to multiple stimuli. Pather Panchali is generally a story of the loss of innocence, but Ray doesn’t structure the scene as a mere sucker punch to the glee and wonder that precedes it. They chase after the locomotive with pure joy, rushing through reeds taller than them, only to return after their merriment to discover their kind, aged relative, Indir (Chunibala Devi), has died. The most famous of these would have to be the scene in the first film when Apu (Subir Banerjee) and his older sister, Durga (Runki Banerjee), spot a train in the distance while out in a field. The director’s control of tone is so great that the films can often juggle two or more conflicting emotions and explore how antithetical moods can complement each other. By framing the verisimilitude of neorealism around the emotional beat of a scene, Ray leverages pseudo-objectivity to make his subjective tragedy all the more poignant, leading an audience while letting them think they’re simply seeing reality. When Harihar asks for some water from the Ganges, however, Apu’s sprint to and from the river lurches the film into opera, culminating in a dying breath matched to the sudden flight of scores of birds outside.
When, for example, the protagonist’s father, Harihar (Kanu Banerjee), catches fever and perishes near the start of Aparajito, Ray initially focuses on the banality of such a commonplace, senseless death in the priest’s ragged breathing and futile attempts to rally himself. Starting with 1955’s Pather Panchali, his feature debut, the director crafted a stark vision of India’s transition into the modern age that nonetheless offset its most unvarnished observations with a sense of poetry that lent classical grandeur to intimate storytelling. Neorealism has always owed more to melodrama than some of its purveyors and admirers are willing to admit, but Satyajit Ray unreservedly acknowledged the influence of the latter in his Apu Trilogy.
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