Columbus with Kogonada, Pather Panchali with Dana Stevens at Filmspotting Fest

25:39You devoted great video essays and dissected the work and the meaning and the emotion and everything that you love about Ozu and Wes Anderson and Brisson. I think that's what she's getting at when asking about feeling inhibited. Ever feel like, well, how can I compete with these filmmakers? Oh, yeah. A hundred percent. You know, yeah. I mean, it never feels like, yeah, yeah. The answer is yes. I think I feel, you know, like that's unattainable. But I enjoy the pursuit of it, but I don't think I'll ever attain all the people that really have had a purpose. I don't, you know, I think at my best, I'm just trying to pursue something that had, you know, that whatever they were chasing after, I want to chase after it, even however imperfectly.

26:27But, you know, it is a part, like, I don't like critics. And, you know, I'm so excited to meet Dana because I've been reading her forever, you know. And you guys can hate my films in the future and stuff. I don't, like, I'm not trying to flatter you guys to get good read because you guys can genuinely hate it. But I do feel like that's like a part of a, like that you, you know, like as a critic, you are writing about it, I think, or you're interacting with it because you love it or you want to love it or you want it, you know. And so even as a filmmaker, I still feel that side of it. But, you know, there's that side of like Jen.

27:00And I think when I was writing about it, part of the reason why I'm so glad to actually be making it is I was getting, you can also get really cynical when it becomes a kind of, you know, the academia was kind of killing it for me, to be honest. I found myself like having to dissect Ozu in a way that I felt like I was killing it. And that's a lot of that, the Jen part of it. That was, you know, it was like, I was putting a conversation between young me who was like coming alive to art and it was changing me. And this me that I was like writing about, and I was trying to understand, you know, that too.

27:36That was a bit of a conversation that I was having. Yeah. Yeah. So looking ahead to where, you know, your work might go and thinking still about locations or even just space. Cause I think in after Yang, the sense of space is so crucial as well. Is there a place you would like to like a dream place you'd like to film? You may not even know what the story is yet. And maybe it's a building, maybe it's a city or a region. And yeah. Have you, have you been somewhere sometime I'd like to make something? You know, I've just finished making maybe the biggest film I'll ever make. And it's like, you know, it's in whatever.

28:14And I just have such a taste to make something really small again, you know. And my cinematographer, I were just talking about this very thing. Like, let's just do something. Let's not a part of the machine and get back to it. And all we're talking about right now is like a play, like what is the place that we want to shoot? So we're actually literally having that discussion. But I will mention something that's not like I, you know, I've often wanted to shoot in Taipei when I was there. It's like such a mix of the ancient and the modern. You can go down an alley that feels like a thousand years old and then turn around the corner and just, you know, so, and then it's like, you know, Edward Yang.

28:49So it's just like, oh God, I would love to shoot in Taipei. I'd love to shoot in Hong Kong, but we're going to really answer that because we're like looking at cities right now to do something really independent and small to counter what, yeah, yeah. Do you want to take a moment here as we wind down to thank Rebecca Fonz and Emily Long and Jack and Blair and everybody here at the Gene Siskel Film Center who's just made this day so wonderful. Thank you so much. And, you know, you were just talking about, as critics, you know, wanting to love films, and I'll go back to what we've been talking about.

29:23Yes, that's true. But it's also, I think, even more than that, about trying to find meaning and trying to find meaning in your response to the film, ultimately, I think is what really drives us and, I think, a lot of critics. So this has been part of that process tonight. And I just. 20 years. 20 years. That's amazing. And I can't tell you how humbled and honored and grateful we are to have you take your time to be part of it. Thank you. No, we got to rush up. But can you answer? I was thinking about a question for you, which is like, what was the like you started this before people knew what podcasts were.

29:56Can you just quickly tell me what would the spark of like there's a thing? Sure. Sure. Well, Sam out there, we wanted to talk about films together. We needed an outlet. We needed an excuse. And as Sam has said recently, everyone, film spotting listeners will love this. We needed some stakes. You know, it couldn't it couldn't just be us talking in a vacuum. We wanted to be judged. We wanted other people to listen to it. We we had to be on the hook for, you know, seeing something every week and processing it and talking about it with each other and delivering the show every week. You know, that was what it was.

30:31And so we committed to that. We didn't know we'd be sitting here 20 years later with the likes of you, but like that was it. We just loved having conversations with each other about film. And the fact that we still get to do this today with Sam, with Josh, of course, it's special. This whole fest so far has been really wonderful. Thank you to all of you who made it happen. Yeah, that's great. That's great. Koganada, everyone. Our heartfelt thanks to Koganada again for joining us at Film Spotting Fest back in March. Columbus is available VOD on most platforms, and you can probably get it via Canopy through your library.

31:07His new film, A Big, Bold, Beautiful Journey, hits theaters on September 19th. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Break through the busiest time of year with the brand new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ. With real-time guidance and endless ways to move, you can personalize your workouts and train with confidence. helping you reach your goals in less time. Let yourself run, lift, sculpt, push, and go. Explore the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus at OnePeloton.com. As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. That's from, what else? Goodfellas, which celebrates its 35th anniversary this month.

31:50Next week, Josh and I will give it the Pantheon Project Treatment, an in-depth review of Scorsese's beloved 1990 film, which has been in the film spotting pantheon, our eccentrically assembled movie hall of fame since 2007. Along with that, we may have thoughts on a few more new and recent releases and results from the current deeply flawed film spotting poll, asking you to choose one and only one animation studio, Pixar or Studio Ghibli, Buzz and Woody, or your neighbor Totoro. Vote in that poll and leave a comment at filmspotting.net. Now playing on our sister podcast, The Next Picture Show, looking at cinema's present via its past.

32:30It's a good one. Part two of their The Kids Are Not Alright pairing, Weapons, and Adam McGowan's 1998 Oscar nominee in one of my favorite films and books, The Sweet Hereafter. New episodes of The Next Picture Show drop every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts.

32:56A bit of Ravi Shankar's score for Satyajit Ray's landmark 1955 film, Padr Panchali. Ray's film was part of the Saturday lineup at the Siskel Film Center at Film Spotting Fest earlier this year. Film Spotting Fest was our three-day, six-film celebration of 20 years of this show. And Saturday was a marathon. We appreciate everybody who toughed it out. all of the films, all three films that were part of that day and all the Q &As, actually four films that day, starting with an 11 a.m. screening of Sean Baker's Tangerine. That was followed by a conversation about the movie with vulture critic Alison Wilmore.

33:36We shared the audio from that Q &A, that discussion on episode 1010 earlier this year. Then it was Jeff Nichols' 2011 film Take Shelter. Allison's former podcast partner, Matt Singer, joined us for a very personal conversation about that one. We're going to share that later this year. Up next was Pader Panchali, Ray's masterpiece right out of the gate debut film and the first film and what became the Apu trilogy, which traced the life of a Bengali boy from rural childhood to school and love and work in the city. After that screening, Josh welcomes Slate Culture Gab Fest critic, Dana Stevens to the stage.

34:13Here's their chat. Dana of Slate, of course, and the veteran of many film spotting live shows. We were trying to figure out four or five. Is that what we thought? Yeah, I believe so. We've done one in New York and we've done three here. And you were a listener well before? Yeah, well, I was thinking about the chronology. You started in 2005. That's right. Yeah, I was not yet a film critic then. I actually became Slate's film critic the following year. I was doing some work and freelancing for Slate and things like that, But I became a film critic almost exactly when your podcast began. So we kind of grew up together.

34:48Yeah, exactly. And I was reading you from the beginning on Slate and just following your career. Well, I was listening from the beginning. So it works well. And yeah, as a matter of fact, so I joined the show 2012. And not long after that is when, we'll see if you remember this, we did Film Spotting 400 Live here with Michael Phillips from the Chicago Tribune. Do you remember what our top five was for that show? No. I forget the top fives myself. We did top five things we learned from the movies. So I wanted to share one of your picks here that you did from back then. And I think it's applicable to our current state of affairs.

35:23You said one thing you learned from the movies is keep on going, no matter what, drawn from Buster Keaton's One Week, which of course makes sense. You also joined us in 2022 to promote your book on Keaton, Cameraman. And we screened. Wonderful book. If you don't have it, check it out. We screened the cameraman there and talked about it afterwards. So thanks for sticking with us all these years. Oh, yeah. Well, it's a pleasure to be asked back. You know, it's funny because both of those things that you just mentioned relate back to this film in a way. First of all, Satuji Ray was a huge fan of Buster Keaton and grew up watching Keaton and Chaplin and Lloyd and lots of Western cinema, probably more than he watched Indian cinema.

36:05And so that was a big part of his formation. And also, what is the message of the end of this film, if not keep on going no matter what? Yeah, no doubt. So we're going to get to Pader Panchali for sure. But I did, given that sort of shared history we've had, I did want to start with a general podcasting question, if you don't mind. So I started listening to Slate Culture Gab Fest as well. So we both have a somewhat similar path in that we started as critics, as writers, and thought about what the craft was in that way, and then shifted to this podcast format. So can you talk a little bit about how that shift went for you?

36:41And if you think how you think about the two differently, you still do both. I continue to write. And what's that switch like when you flip it or do you not feel like it's a switch? Yeah, it's definitely a switch. And then often I'll write and podcast on the same film, which is a good chance to go back and revisit in whichever comes second, right, what you didn't get to the first time around. I mean, not at all to integrate what we do as podcasters, but I will say that podcasting on a movie is much, much easier than writing on it. I mean, if you think about it, I think if after you see a movie and you were sitting with a friend, would you rather talk about it into a mic for 15 minutes, which is what I do on the podcast, or sit and painfully try to create, express in words how you felt about it for, you know, six to 10 hours?

37:25I mean, it's just it's more labor intensive to write about something. think. So what is your preparation for going on Culture Gap Fest? If you know, let's say it's a movie you haven't written about. What sort of prep do you go through? Do you have notes down? Have you written like a rough draft review that's not necessarily going to be published? No, I don't take in notes because I feel like when you're sitting behind a mic, and I'm sure you guys, because how spontaneous you sound, you may bring in notes, but you don't script anything about what you say, right? That is what makes it a free-flowing conversation.

37:54Now, I just try to be as reasonably prepared as I can. I mean, it's never enough. You always feel like, oh, I should have seen more films by this director. If it's something that you really need to have seen, like the prequel, right, or the prior thing in the series, or sometimes if it's based on a really, really well-known popular book, I'll try to read at least some of the book, right? If it's the kind of movie that most people seeing it would have read the book, then I want to come in with a little knowledge of the book too. But yeah, I think the same as you, I'm probably just cramming as fast as I can to try to try to have something to say.

38:24A lot of cramming. And I think I found the sort of the magic trick is to, yes, sound that sort of casual and spontaneous and certainly genuinely bring a lot of that. But at least I found I have to like have a lot of preparation to build on or to rely upon or to have that somewhere in the background. So, yeah, yeah. I mean, you have to have, you know, I'll often print out the cast list or, you know, if it's an older film, I'll sort of learn something about the production history as I did for this film, because you don't want to go in there just saying, here's a movie I saw that lasted two hours, because that movie obviously comes from a whole history of other movies and that creators other work and so forth.

39:00Let's start with that production history, because I know being a researcher as you are, that you did take the time to look into some of that beyond what you already knew for Padra Panchali. So yeah, can you share some of that with us? You already alluded to Ray being a fan of Keaton. I know that he was very influenced by Western cinema, but maybe what's some other production history stuff or time of release stuff that might be good to hear about i mean for this film in particular it really i think helps you it enriches your understanding of the movie and and also just makes your jaw drop to the ground to hear some of the production history of this movie because first of all it's his debut film right like saty jibre had never made a film before not only that his cinematographer who he had just met i'll tell you how they met in a second whose name is and i wrote it down so i don't get all of these Indian names mixed up, Subrata Mitra, who remained his DP for quite a while.

39:48He did all three of the Apu films, for example. But Subrata Mitra had never picked up a film camera before. He had worked as an assistant with Jean Renoir, who came to India to make the movie The River. And this was how Satyajit Ray, part of how Satyajit Ray decided that he wanted to become a filmmaker, is that in Calcutta, where he lived, the great French filmmaker Jean Renoir came to make a movie called the river that's about colonialists. It's about an English colonial family in India. And it's one of Martin Scorsese's films, favorite films, actually, which I didn't know. And Satyajit Ray, who was about 29, 30 at the time, huge film fan, sort of hung out and watched some of the filming and became friends with Jean Renoir and just sat around and talked to him about a movie he would like to make, which eventually became Pathir Panchali.

40:33And it was on that set that he met this young man, 20 years old, who was handling the camera and sort of production assistant stuff. And that was Sumatra Mitra who became his cinematographer. So all of this came together in a very kind of DIY way. Satyajit Ray was a graphic designer at the time and a book illustrator, you know, basically worked in commercial art and had illustrated the novel that Pather Panchali is based on. And you can look at his illustrations and some of them become actual images in the movie. That moment when Durga and Apu are sitting under the monsoon and she's wrapping him in her shawl.

41:07Looks almost exactly like an illustration that he made for the book. So he storyboarded it. He had it all in his brain. But it took a really long time for him to raise the money to make it, including during filming. So it took, I think, about two and a half years to film this because they had to keep breaking off because they ran out of money. They got some money from the Bengali government and they got some money from different investors, but they would run out and he would have to go back to his graphic design job and keep working. At one point, he tells the story that they need to film the monsoon, and they missed monsoon season because they didn't have money at that time.

41:39So they had to wait for the next year in order to film that. And do you know much about the release? I mean, we think of it now as this world cinema classic. Was that a reputation that took a while to gather? Was it fairly immediate after the release? Do you have much on that? Yeah, I mean, that brings up a whole wider fact about film history, which is sort of the whole idea of an international success was pretty new at this moment. Like Rashomon, at least the Western release of Rashomon, I think, was 1950, the Kurosawa movie that, you know, sort of broke through, sort of brought Asian cinema to the West in a big way.

42:10And so I think it only would have been after 1950 that anybody would have even thought about bringing an Indian film to the West. And certainly a kind of indie, or you could consider this an indie film in a way, it's not any part of the studio system, it's self-financed, etc. For that to break through is even more unusual. and I think in a way the long production history helped with that because during this period that he was agonizingly raising funds and his wife sold her jewelry and they did all these things to get the film made, a lot of people saw the footage. He was showing bits of it to different investors to try to get interest in it and that included some Western people.

42:46So Renoir was one of them and there was a guy from New York, from MoMA, I think, who came to India to do some research and saw some of it And then MoMA ended up giving him some money to finish filming it. In fact, this was seen in New York before it was ever seen in India. They brought it for some kind of Indian festival at MoMA, sort of an art display or something like that. And it was considered enough of a splash there that then it came back to Calcutta and started to be seen. So it was a bit of a slow rollout. But Pauline Kael wrote about it. You know, people, lots of people at the time did.

43:17Actually, Pauline Kael would have been a bit later than that. But Bosley Crowther of The New York Times, right, wrote a sort of strangely exoticizing and racist review of it. He did like the movie, but I actually wrote down a couple of the things he said because it gives you a bit of an idea of what the mainstream press sounded like when talking about Asian film. He said that it was a baffling mosaic of candid and crude domestic scenes. And he wrapped it up saying, as we say, it is quite exotic. You know, so he kind of regarded it as this exotic curiosity, very slow. He thought it was way too slow, but it did slowly start to make an impression.

43:51And by the late 50s, it was a beloved film. All right. Well, let's let's hear from a better critic you about how how you interact with this movie, your personal history with it, if you have much or like when you first saw it, what you made of it after screening it today. the word that kept popping into my mind this afternoon was purity. And I don't mean that in a moral sense. I mean, like an elemental sense. Like maybe if there was a cinematic periodic table, Padra Panjali would have to be on it. I don't know what I mean by that, but it's just like, it's so, it's basic. Elemental. Yeah. I see what you mean.

44:31So that was my impression today. But what, yeah. When did, do you remember when you first saw it? And if your feelings about it have changed over time and where they were at today. I do. I know this is the first Ray film that I saw. And I believe I probably saw it at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, where I was a grad student in the 90s. And it was one of the places of my film education. Is there a PFA fan out there? Yes. and it's the kind of thing that they would have brought in I'm sure I must have seen the trilogy at that time but this is the one that struck me that I remember you know being sort of transformed by and I've seen it many times since then I wrote on it for Slate in 2015 when Criterion restored it and the restoration story is kind of insane too because the negative had burned and melted and you know they just they had to do so much to get this movie back to how it looks now incredible so pristine looks fantastic and so I wrote on the whole trilogy for Slate then and I actually wanted to read another quote, which appears in that piece from Kurosawa, which you may have heard, this is a very famous quote about Ray.

45:31I think it may be the most perfect criticism of him that there could be. It's so condensed. There's nothing to add. But Kurosawa in 1975, so 20 years after the movie came out, said, not to have seen the films of Satyajit Ray means existing in the world without ever having seen the sun and the moon, which is so beautiful. And it speaks to what you You were saying that this, even though I just told you what this production history that was so patchy, it has this organic feeling like it just grew out of the ground like that. You know, it just feels like this force of nature that just surged up. To get some of the nature scenery here from, yeah, first time filmmaker, first time cinematographer, the reeds and the way the sunlight catches them, the clouds, the water.

46:14I mean, it's just unbelievable. And yeah, we saw, you know, the beginning was the history of the restoration. And as you mentioned that what they were working with to be able to build it up to this, we're just really fortunate to have it. I know one of the things that you mentioned we should probably touch on is this idea of transitions in the film. So because we do go through periods of time, rather large periods of time in subtle ways, I feel like, slippery ways, maybe. So, yeah. What did you notice this time in terms of the film's transitions? Yeah, I sent Josh that note last night. Transitions.

46:49We have to talk about them because it really, really struck me watching this again that almost every scene transition is a dissolve, which is really unusual. Right. There's lots and lots and lots of dissolves. And then there's occasionally fades to black. And only within scenes, of course, there's normal cutting in between shots. But there's this there's just a real insistence on making images flow into one another. And of course, flow and flowing water is this recurring image. I mean, water is so important, right? And to me, all the memorable images of this film that you take away involve water.

47:23The incredible upside down shot when they're following the sweet cellar near the beginning and you see them reflected upside down in the pond. or I want to talk more about this later closer to the ending that great transitional montage with the water skimmers moving over the water and the raindrops beginning and it's really long it's really extensive and you kind of feel like we're moving into a different chapter and sure enough it's a different chapter because what happens as a result of that rainstorm we lose Durga you know but the idea that this movie is kind of a flowing river which is something else Kurosawa said about it I didn't even know he had said that until doing this research but when I watch it I always feel like you're caught up in the river of the film.

47:59You know, it's like the camera's flowing along, the water is flowing, and all those transitions that are so fluid just move you from one time to the next. But there's a mystery how much time passes during this movie, right? It's hard to figure out. A few times that time is mentioned, like Durga says to her friend who's getting married, it's a month and two days until your wedding. And there's the letter from the traveling fathers, and she says he's been gone for five months, but we don't know how long those months are separated by or how long the auntie was away when she went away. But there's this sense of repetition.

48:33I think my theory about the dissolved transitions is that they're almost like if you speak a romance language, they're like an imperfect tense compared to a perfect tense. You know, it's like a continued action in the past compared to a thing that happens just one time. Because to me, the transition seemed to suggest the repetitive cycle of life in the village. You know, these things have happened many times, Like when the band comes to play or the different festivals, it's like this cyclical life and the temporal marks in the movie somehow communicate that so perfectly. Yeah, there's a poeticism to that, but there's also, as you're describing it, it makes me think of the mother's experience.

49:09So the mother played by Karuna Banerjee, how she seems to exist in this loop, this cycle, but out of time, especially as grief becomes more something heavier to bear for her, where she's almost in her own time and space. and when her husband returns, it's especially striking how he could be a ghost to her as far as she's concerned at first when he arrives. So yeah, it's playing with time in so many slippery ways. We've been talking a lot about water, nature images and settings, but we get little bursts of modernity in this film. And I think they're key. I think that's one of the crucial things this movie is exploring, you know, a village like this, which is stuck in time in some was and the intrusions of modernity.

49:54So the train that we hear first, right? That one night with a family is just quietly going about their business and then the train intrudes. Or when brother and sister go out to the fields and they're looking at the electrical towers and there's an intrusion right in, they're planted in the water, in nature there. So I'm curious what you made of kind of that element, which is, as I was watching it now, after we've seen the wonderful All We Imagine is Light, another Indian film from this year. And that concludes with some characters returning to a village, an ancestral village in a way, that that dynamic is still in contemporary India, a thing I thought was interesting.

50:33But yeah, in terms of how it plays out in Padre Panchali, this modernity and tradition tension, what do you make of that? It's really sophisticated because it's not a nostalgic movie. It was accused at the time by some of being in a stat, you know, that it idealized or sort of romanticized poverty or that it was looking back at a village past and sort of frightened of modernity. There is very unsettling music when you see those towers, you know, the music, which, by the way, is by Ravi Shankar, the great sitar player. You know, who taught George Harrison to play sitar. It's an unbelievable score that completely stands on its own.

51:07You can just listen to the soundtrack as an album. But yeah, the music gets modern there and strange when they're looking at the electrical towers. I mean, this kind of brings up the placement of this movie. Is it a movie about India's past or about India's future? And the fact that it was made right after the partition of India and Pakistan, right after the decolonization of India and the creation of basically taking Bengal, which is where this takes place. It's a Bengali movie in Bengali language. and Bengal had just been divided between West and East. And I'm not going to know my history well enough to get every detail right, but essentially I think it is safe to say that the Muslims and the Hindus had sort of been split up.

51:45You know, the ethnicity of Bengal had been turned into two different regions. And so this movie is in a way looking back at a time when there was a village life that was simpler than that. But I would not say at all, especially given the end and the fact that they leave the ancestral home, that it's idealizing that time. And then if you keep on watching the trilogy, the next section there in Benares, where they move to at the end of this film. And then finally, Apu, as an adult, moves to Calcutta, the big city. So nostalgic or not, it is a movie about forward movement into, it's a series, rather, about forward movement into the modern age.

52:21If anyone here has not seen the other two films in the trilogy, hopefully this will move you to do that. It is one complete story. It's a life. It's a full life that you experience. And Apu is such a complete character. I mean, I don't know about you all, but I almost always have a problem in films where a new actor comes in to play someone as they grow up. You know, it's so rare that it actually seems like an older version of that person. It was something that the recent Brazilian movie I'm Still Here had a very clever card up its sleeve where the older woman version of the main character is played by her own mother, who is also a great Brazilian actress.

52:51And, you know, you don't often you're not lucky enough to just say, oh, here's an actress who, you know, looks exactly like that person, but is much older. But even though the three Apus don't really resemble each other physically, you completely believe it's the same boy because the film has just showed you so clearly who he is. Yeah. Quickly on the modernity thing, watching, especially I think that scene with the electrical towers, but even regarding the train or listening to the train, I think the reason you can't identify this as nostalgic or progressive towards the future, but really existing in the tension is that it gives both siblings distinct relationships to the potential change.

53:29So I think of Opu, when you first hear the train, he looks up, the rest of the family doesn't engage with it. And even the first time I saw it, I felt like, oh, he's gone. He's not going to live here forever. Because when he hears that train, he's excited by it. And when they go to the electrical towers, you'll notice it's more subtle. Opu is curious. He's not quite as excited. But as they both take turns listening to that hum, which the music captures, you notice how she is a little bit more of a frown. in that moment. Like, what are these? Is this dangerous? Whereas Apu is more of this curiosity.

54:04He's not afraid of it. And I think that echoes where he'll go, as you said, the rest of his life. Well, think of the first time you see Apu when he's not a little baby. It's his eye, just his bright eye coming through that little hole in the blanket when she opens it up. It's just one of the great character introductions of all time. And you know so much about him from that and from the incredible boy they found, Subir Banerjee, who plays him, who was unprofessional, You know, just a kid, actually just that the director's wife spotted in Calcutta and said, this is your Apu. He had been trying to cast the right kid.

54:35But, yeah, something about focusing on his eye and his curiosity. You just know that he's a boy whose mind is going places. Let's talk about the performances a little bit while we still have some time here. So, as you said, Subir Banerjee as Apu, Durga, the sister, when she's older, Uma Dasgupta. How do these register to you? Because they're a combination of very natural, almost without much experience in the case of Opu, but also, you know, more theatrical in some scenes is the grieving scene we saw when the father learns what has happened to his daughter. So, yeah, how do you kind of gauge performances in a film like this?

55:12I mean, I know that Sajidhid Ray didn't want to have known professionals. I think the father was the most known. I think he had done some films before and would have been familiar, but not a star. The woman who plays the mother had only done sort of local regional theater, but she had acted a little bit. Uma Dasgupta, who plays the teenage Durga, had again acted a little bit, but was not famous. Subir Banerjee was just a kid from the street that they found. By the way, just as a note, three or four of the people in this movie are named Banerjee, but they're not related. I think it's just a very, very common name.

55:41But they all seem to be, they seem, there's not any sense of inconsistency among their acting styles, right? I mean, to me, they all feel like found actors in the sense that nobody is theatrical. But I will say that the way the mother plays many scenes when she's, you know, trying to refill the rice and, you know, her scenes of grief, I feel like she belongs in a tradition of melodrama. You know, she makes me think of Anamanyani or one of those actresses who play, you know, just grand operatic emotions so beautifully. Yeah, you're right. We should mention the father, Kanu Banerjee, to your point, the last name.

56:15And I was struck how Apu has to be his kid in real life, I'm thinking. Their smiles, right? They both share that enthusiasm we've been talking about. Maybe misguided a bit on the father's part, you know. And then also Auntie, we need to mention, Chunabala Devi, as this just kind of mysterious figure, like where she exists in the village, where she exists in the household. Where does her joy come from to go back to your, you know, that top five choice you made about carrying on and moving on? She's the one who carries on repeatedly to a new home, but yet such an elemental figure in the film, I think.

56:54Yeah, well, that actress had been around since the silent era. And I think basically they went looking for her. Like, is she still around? And she was living in the red light district of Calcutta and was very old. And during that period of two and a half years that they're trying to get funding and they have to keep pausing, their big fear was, is this actress going to die and we're not going to be able to finish it? But she made it through. And that was what Rai was so, so grateful for, that she lived in time to finish the film. And also the kids didn't grow so fast that, you know, they seem to be roughly within the same year.

57:24When you talked about the extended production, I was thinking, how did those kids not just sprout up? I presume that they must have filmed it in order, you know, or at least tried to film it in order so that it would seem natural that they were growing up. But, yeah, you don't really see them changing a lot. I think we have to wrap up pretty quickly here. Is there any last thoughts you had about how they're coming out? I had a question for you, and I don't know if you'll have time to answer, but just in, you know, regarding your book and your interest in faith and religion on film, just what you thought of this movie's representation of faith and prayer, because that's a complicated thing, I think, for Rye.

57:56I mean, he was not a pious man himself, but he made a lot of films about devotion and piety. There's a ton there. And I don't have the background in what the many prayers we see in this film mean in that context. And clearly there's also an economic element. I mean, his livelihood is tied to this identity as a priest. So I would love to actually read something that talks about what those prayers are and what they might mean for this family. For my book project, it was more looking at categories of Christian prayer than looking at films like this and saying, what might it mirror, echo for me? And so interestingly enough, the world of Opu is the one I wrote about in the book, because one of the categories of prayer I write about is prayers of joy.

58:38And world of Opu, Adam's favorite, is partially this marital relationship, and it's where Opu ends up. And there's loss and heart-sick there, too, but a very joyful film. I'm watching Padre Panchali again today and thinking, this is a joyful film as well. I don't think I included it immediately because of the deaths, obviously, and the family leaves. And it seems silly to say as it just ended, but if you think about all the moments in that movie where there is joy expressed, a gratefulness, a gratitude for sun, for play, for fruit, for life, for just being alive. And maybe it takes a family living on the edge this close to truly appreciate that, as you'll hear some people say who are in dire situations, thankful to be awake today.

59:27I'm grateful to be alive today. This is a family that experiences that. So, yeah, I didn't write a lot about Padra Pancali. I focused more on the world of Opu, but I think I could have after watching it again today. So thanks for asking. Thank you. Dana has been one of our favorite guests over the years of doing this show, and it was a thrill to have her in person at Film Spotting Fest. And I know that was a highlight conversation for many of our attendees. Our thanks again to Dana. You can find her work over at Slate.com. For more about Film Spotting Fest, you can visit FilmSpottingFest.com. That's our show.

1:00:05You can find me and the show at Instagram, Facebook, Letterboxd, at Filmspotting. Also, find us at YouTube, at Filmspotting. Josh is at Larson on film on most of those platforms as well and over on Blue Sky. Filmspotting is independently produced and listener supported. Support the show by joining the Filmspotting family at Filmspottingfamily.com. You can listen early and ad-free. Plus, get a weekly newsletter, monthly bonus episodes, and access to the entire show archive. For show t-shirts and other merch, go to filmspotting.net slash shop. In that archive, you can find Koganada interviews about Columbus, episode 650, and After Yang, episode 868.

1:00:49Our Satchajit Ray marathon from 2015 included conversations about Padr Panchali, Aparajito, that was The Unvanquished, as it is also known. Apar Sonsar, The World of Apu. The Music Room, The Big City, The Lonely Wife. It was one of our favorite marathons ever. Out now, streaming in VOD, a movie we kind of loved. Reviewed last week on the show, 1029, Highest to Lowest. The new Spike Lee is now out on Apple TV+. Angel Headed Hipster, the documentary about Mark Bolin, which I talked about a little bit on episode 1026. That's also out VOD. In limited release, a new film starring Andre Holland as a writer navigating complicated relationships in a rapidly changing Brooklyn.

1:01:33It's a directing debut that premiered at this year's Sundance called Love, Brooklyn. Preparation for the Next Life, directed by Bing Liu, another golden brick winner like Koganata, who made the great documentary Minding the Gap. This is a film about a Uyghur woman who migrates to New York City and meets and falls in love with an army vet played by Fred Heckinger, who has just returned from three tours in the Middle East. Also out in limited release, The Threesome, directed by Chad Hartigan, who made Morris from America and Little Fish. It stars Zoe Deutsch and Ruby Cruz and Jonah Hoyer-King as the titular threesome.

1:02:14Katie Walsh says, When you order a sex farce and get a sweet, affecting, nuanced exploration of modern relationships instead, anchored by incredible performances and cinematography, that's the Chad Hartigan promise. Okay, who knew? Outwide, The Conjuring, Last Rites, Hamilton, a 10th anniversary theatrical release of the musical, Twinless, two young men meet in a twin bereavement support group and form an unlikely bromance. next week it is our Pantheon project review of Goodfellas at 35 we'll see what else we can get up to and we will hear from Josh Larson in his new abode in Scotland film spotting is produced by Golden Joe Dessau and Sam Van Haugren without Sam and Golden Joe the show wouldn't go our production assistant is Sophie Kempinar and special thanks to everyone at WBEZ Chicago more information is available at WBEZ.org for film spotting I'm Adam I'm Kempinar.

1:03:09Thanks for listening. This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

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