Kanchenjungha

I think this is a great movie by any standard. This is also a very complex one. People who are familiar with Ray's Apu Triology will find it difficult to grasp the fact that the same ray is the director of this film.

Kanchenjungha deals set in hilly areas deals with 20th century problems in pristine location. Problems that we try to suppress in daily life, seems to get revealed and exposed to everybody else. It is like we are revealing ourselves as Kanchenjungha is exposed through bright sunlight.

Please note that you have to be patient with this movie. It is very different from all other Ray movies. Furthermore, there exists no central character. It is probably the most underrated of all Ray movies.

This is not meant as an insult, but this Ray film comes off a bit like an episode of "Love Boat". I really mean no disrespect, but on the old TV show, you had several different couples who all had a story and they all had that common link of working it out on vacation. Here, instead of in a boat, it's in the mountainside where various Indians are vacationing. Most of them are family members but there are also others whose stories end up intersecting with them. There is the family patriarch and his wife, the daughter they want to marry off and the man who she is not in love with, the nice but poor suitor, the husband and wife working through a case of infidelity and more.

Like so many of Satyajit Ray's films, this one is about middle and upper class Indians and their everyday problems. The key to these films is the acting--the realistic acting and the connection the audience makes with these real folks. In many, many, many ways, these films are nothing like the Bollywood films of today--and there is no singing and the fairytale-like plots of many of the newer films is totally absent. Realism is the key--and a bit reminiscent of Ozu's films about ordinary but likable folks. While "Kanchenjungha" is not one of his more famous films and its plot a bit too ordinary, I think it's actually one of his best films--full of realism and heart--but also not everyone's sort of film.

Located on the border between Nepal and the state of Sikkim in India, Kanchenjungha (also spelled Kangchenjunga) is the highest mountain in India and the third highest in the world. That its setting for a film would be lovely is a given, but the fact that the mountain is often covered in mist makes it a perfect metaphor for the obstacles that can cloud people's vision. Such is the theme of Satyajit Ray's 1962 film Kanchenjunga, a look at changing values in the early days of Indian independence. It is a film that is firmly fixed in the Ray tradition: slow moving, intimate, and lyrical, filled with conflicted characters, social commentary, exquisite music, and enchanting children.

Kanchenjunga deals with parallel stories and the interconnectedness of people's lives, a format that would be even more in vogue fifteen years later. Focused on the upper middle-class Choudhuri family vacationing in Darjeeling, the story unfolds in real time, taking place in one day. The father Indranath (Chhabi Biswas), who has nothing but admiration for the former British rulers, has played the system to reach his position as the powerful head of five companies. The pompous patriarch usually gets his way and both he and his normally submissive wife Labanya Roy (Karuna Bannerjee) expect his daughter Monisha (Alaknanda Roy) to follow his wishes and marry a dull but rising bureaucrat named Bannerjee (N. Viswanathan) who, if nothing else, can provide his bride with security.

What Indranath has not counted on, however, is that Monisha has a mind of her own and an old-fashioned idea that love should play a part in whom you marry. Labanya asserts herself as well, telling Monisha that she has to make up her own mind. The story takes place as the characters walk along the scenic hill station in late afternoon waiting for the clouds to clear so they can get a good view of the mountains. Another prominent player, Ashoke (Arun Mukherjee), a 24-year-old working class man from Calcutta who had tutored Indranath's son Anil when he was a little boy, is on vacation with his uncle. The semi-comic uncle wants him to cozy up to Indranath, envisioning the possibilities for a job paying 300 rupees a month for his nephew. Ashoke takes the opportunity and meets the tycoon but is treated like a servant, Indranath asking him to go to his room to bring him his red muffler.

The young man gets the last laugh, however, when he turns down his offer of a job after a long monologue about how successful he has become. More importantly to Ashoke, however, is his meeting with Indranath's daughter Monisha. Though they come from different economic levels of society, their unpretentiousness draw them to each other and their budding relationship holds promise for the future. Other characters are Monisha's older sister, Anima (Anubha Gupta), and her husband Shankar (Subrata Sen Sharma), who are trying to patch up a relationship that has broken down as a result of his drinking and gambling, and her long-term affair with another man, but they are bound together by the love of their young daughter who rides a horse around the hill during the entire afternoon.

These sub-dramas play out against the background of the imposing mountains. As evening approaches and the sky clears, the characters, liberated by the beauty that surrounds them, are able to see with clarity a society changing before their eyes and how their lives have been forever affected. Kanchenjungha is Ray's first color film and one that he produced and directed, wrote the original screenplay, and composed the music, an impressive feat. Though none of his subsequent work ever reached the stratospheric heights of The Apu Trilogy, the mark of a great director is when one of his obscure, minor films can fit into the category of a masterpiece. It's a good fit for Kanchenjungha.

Magical, lyrical and a highly intellectual film, Kanchenjungha, was Satyajit's first original screenplay. It depicts a real time event of 100 minutes on screen. It was quite ahead of its time and it's still amazing to see again and again.

If this movie were an ibsen play (like enemy of the people was) it would be a one act play. Its power comes from the firm pencil stokes of the sketch that is the film. And it is a film about the tiniest of all characters in it- the (suitable) girl that's fresh as a yellow mountain flower.

Satyajit ray uses the elements as symbolism in his films. He does so quietly here. The gentle sound montages (sply the raspy and raucous sound in a supposedly genteel holiday resort ) are used to draw attention to elements and turns in the smooth plot. And the mountain ranges are used as powerful visual metaphor.

The last day of the family's stay at the resort has come, the ranges of snowcapped Himalayas are still obscured by clouds. The view is reputedly spectacular and nobody knows if a glimpse of the Kanchenjungha peak is possible before they leave. The Suitable boy has not yet proposed to the youngest daughter of a patriarch moneybags , and everyone is hoping he will today. Her sister, who married unhappily and has continued an affair she started before her wedding must decide what to do about it. The brothers of the patriarch chase after birds of different kinds, while an old tutor seeks to get his nephew a Job with the patriarch..

Complexly created simple tale of everyday life.