... but definitely not black and white. The lives of an impoverished rural Bengal family, their daily fight for survival and the monotony of that fight - all brought to life by the genius of Satyajit Ray.

Ray's "Pather Panchali," the first of his unforgettable "Apu Trilogy," is a remarkable film experience. The acting is strong, the direction and script, sure, and the total work, eloquent and moving. A film which one can return to again and again, and each time one can discover new elements. This is a staple of my video library, along with Ray's other two films which complete the trio, "Aparajito" and "The World of Apu." I have watched the trilogy in a continuous sitting on two occasions, and the experience was emotionally overwhelming.

I won't go into detail about this film, because the greatest films ask that you really just sit back and enjoy them without questioning. This is in a very very small handful of films that create a kind of 'ecstatic truth' that Werner Herzog is always talking about. There is not a moment of hand-fed emotion, and that's probably what hits you first after the film is finished. This is probably why the film has not hit even the first 250 on the IMDb list, while it is more easily accessible than, say, most 'foreign' pictures, it still refuses at every turn to make a cliché out of itself or to be unfair to the audience or its characters by making its machinations obvious, a ploy that most filmgoers fall for time and time again. A reason for this might be that Ray, a young director at the time who had already worked with Jean Renoir on his landmark film about India called 'the River', really didn't have a lot of money or power to wield around, and made this tight, intimate story on a shoestring with an amateur crew, without real concern for anything else but this story that he wanted to tell. A lot of that comes across - the locations, the actors - were all real, however this is a work of masterful collaboration between director, cinematographer, actors, sound recordist, and particularly the editors, a collaboration that is unparalleled in most modern, big budget films. This is a movie created solely with passion, and I am joining in the crusade to make this one of the top 250 on IMDb, though it should, by default, belong on the top 10 of anybody's list.