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Just watching this film and writing a critique on it without having watched all the three films of 'Apu Trilogy' would be considered an impertinent move and a Himalayan mistake to boot. 'Apur Panchali' can be considered one of the best films in Bengali cinema and also the world over. It being not just a rehash of the reputed trilogy, the film explores quite a few precious moments of mainly the famous child actor (Subir Banerjee) of 'Pather Panchali' and how his life was meant to develop some 'uncanny' parallels with the story of the three films. Kaushik Ganguly has touched upon the very tender issues that have gone unheeded until now.

A child who had became famous and came to be known to the whole world as the child Apu, later on went into the unknown, cooped-up and covert depths of personal life, which, however, did not keep abreast with him till the very end. Almost like Apu, Subir Banerjee also lost the members of his family in a sequence and was left alone and aloof - just like a deliberate social outcast. He was living life on his own terms until when, quite abruptly, Arka searches Subir out and coaxes him to attend an honorary ceremony for one of the most celebrated child actors of all time. Here, Subir betrays his listless and short temper gradually engendered by the buffets of fortune and life drawn somewhat by The Almighty from the 'Apu Trilogy', it seems. But Arka makes Subir realize the latter's real worth. In the way, childless Subir gets beck a son, fatherless Arka gets back a father and we get back the child actor of 'Pather Panchali.'

The story of the film is told in a way that places the reel-and-the-real parallels very subtly. While the trilogy's scenes are shown we relieve the moments, but we turn very sympathetic when they are reverberated in the child actor's real life. Parambrata assays the character of younger Subir and Parno assays Ashima. They act like real people. There's one moment when Parno says ways to look after himself while Ashima would be staying away from Apu. The director keeps things very simple which raises the level of the film to great heights, seen in few directors in Bengal. Apart from the director, the writer Kaushik also stands firm and high above most of the playwrights in the celluloid arena.

Sirsha Roy's cinematography touched upon the softest parts of an artiste's life that tell upon our lachrymal glands. Bodhaditya Banerjee has also done no less commendable job. Art direction by Mridul Baidya and Saswati Karmakar stands par excellence. Without it the film would not have got it's archival look. The excellent music that wafts throughout the movie makes one feel nostalgic and catches up with the original films of the trilogy to not a less extent.

To sum up, it's a film not to be given a miss at any cost, whatsoever.

A married woman's hand writing, apparently, her last letter; an exhausted man returning home after a day's work, rather languidly, only to find his wife hanging from the ceiling of his house with his son looking at the lifeless frame ( all shot in the sepia tone ); two actors of the past era trying to come to terms with their differences and mouthing lines from Tagore's Ghare Baire only to widen the chasm between them all the more; the actors requesting a director to become producer and suggesting their friend as the director; the start of the shooting ( all shot in black and white ) - the film kicks off with moments ( scenes ) like these, which, along the warp and woof of the creative piece by Srijit, are strewn about as are dried-up and shrivelled-up leaves on an avenue to give the way its realism and magic realism. A viewer would find it hard to relate these scenes with the main plot along the progression of the movie till the unknotting.

The film tells, or rather, seems to tell the story of four film- makers who have been assigned the task of directing four short films for a single anthology of a film with the common theme of death. This venture brings together Trina ( Aparna Sen ), Shakyo ( Goutam Ghosh ), Dipta ( Chiranjeet ), Jayabrata ( Parambrata ). They all go out to the Henry's Island to discuss at length about the film where the idiosyncrasies of the characters ( directors themselves ) are brought to the fore. Their past lives catch up with them - their successes, their failures, their deeds, misdeeds, regrets and all that have made them what they are. The pinch of dark humour can be felt at times, in fact, with increasing frequency, near the end of the movie.

The overriding themes of love, betrayal, retribution, regret, repercussion and their interplay with inklings of several other undercurrents of themes of 'smoking and the sensor board', 'smoking and health injury', 'life likened to the game of cards', 'creator and the created', 'life and afterlife', 'reel and real' and so on appear at proper places to hammer sensibility into the minds of the audience and the people of the society thereof.

Use of colour has been a significant contribution to the film. Starting from sepia to black-white to colour with green, red, blue and the former two in between create a strange embroidery of insights relating directly or indirectly to the main plot of the film.

Astute cinematography by Sudeep Chatterjee captures a vengeful Jayabrata inching towards his goal, the reel-life characters unwittingly revealing, with their characteristic behaviour and style, their real-life dilemmas and situations. Anupam's lyrics at just places give rise to the progression towards the dénouement.

An erudite Srijit never misses a chance to allude to Ghare Baire, Mr and Mrs Iyer, Troyee, the Pandora's Box, Shakespeare, King-Queen- Jack-and-Joker, etc. to accentuate the effect at various moments in the film. Every moment, every incident seem to be connected to the main plot. When Shakyo and Dipta sit in a room and discuss about films, they both have the cards King-Queen-Jack without each of them knowing it. This indicates a rift of friendship between them despite their overtly good bonding. It also indicates that the unknown angle ('kone' or the Joker) would appear before them to complete the quadrangle or the fourth cards of the quartet. The Joker or Jayabrata leaves no stone unturned to let not a minute pinch of suspicion lay waste his platter-full plan of liquidating the three directors in a bungalow till the very fag end. The sudden realization of the whole story of four short films being a pretext makes the three captive directors nonchalant as a lull before the storm; and they do realize that a stormy death is what they each deserve for a family was laid waste long back only because of them. The Pandora's Box is opened very slowly and silently along the progression of the film, but Hope reigns at last when Dipta and Trina, together, take responsibility of the mad film producer essayed by Kaushik Ganguly and he does it beyond comparison.

To sum up, it can be said that the director makes the film socially acceptable by meting out justice when Jayabrata receives the shot meant for Trina and his song 'Chiro shokha hey...' stops abruptly. 'An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind' rings in everyone's ears long after the film has ended.

Shakespeare's famous line, "I have liv'd long enough. My way of life. Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf" does not hold water here in this film. Vladimír Michálek pokes fun at, & at the same time offers a shoulder to rest heads on to, those who are counting their last days because, as the saying goes, their days are numbered.

Frantisek Hána (Fanda), who is just a few paces away from his grave, thumps his nose at old age and lives life king size; at one place he says, 'old men should be rich and respectable.' Being in the autumn of his life his spring does not fade; rather it's the spring that's mightier. If Fanda is the obverse of the coin called life, then Emílie Hánová is the reverse of it. She's all autumn: and she even tries to make her autumn (death) grand and peaceful. She stashes away money for their funerals; reads various dead person's epitaphs and even, rather hilariously, copies them; she also books a place where their graves would be; she desires herself and pesters Fanda to shift to an old-age home before death. Emilie, a woman rather obsessed than sad and afraid of death, through her small, almost blink-and-you-miss, acts in the film has painted a picture of the intensity of a soul to live every moment of one's life. it's just that her intensity to live has overgrown and surpassed towards death itself. Hence, she wants to die a peaceful death and even stay there peacefully.

For Fanda death may be the ultimate upshot, but why whine and pine for it? His gather-ye-rosebuds-while-ye-may attitude towards life jars Emilie's preordained plans. He plays pranks with unknown people and wines and dines in posh restaurants; squanders Emilie's hard-saved money in whimsical trifles; pretends to be a ticket collector or a well-off personality looking for a mansion and so on. The man may be a jumping light of happiness, yet he does not desert them who are not: he often helps people in need with money, though he has none. The way he looks at life becomes a dish to savour and hang on with till the last breath. Jiri Hubac has touched upon the pathos of old age and the outright resignation of such traditional pathos of a man when his last days can be counted on his fingers.

A subtly dark, but hilarious, humour plays upon the various strings that transform the film into a musical unison of life and its counterpart - death. The film celebrates and undoes before the viewers the various themes of marriage, friendship, life, death and how they work in consonance with everything that meets the eye. The carpe-diem motif signified by Fanda wins over Emilie's pessimism. She spends most of her savings in the end only to enjoy, and more precisely, to live a moment in her life with Fanda before the Reaper wields his sickle.

Ed (Stanislav Zindulka) remains as a living image of friendship and a perfect companion and a sweet accomplice of Fanda in good and mischievous deeds. Ed's death at last tells upon Fanda which signifies the approach of autumn, though spring never fades in this movie - only changes colours at times which seem like autumn.

Jara (Ondrej Vetchy), the prying and covetous vulture that he is, tries every opportunity to make his parents' life miserable. He spreads a shroud over the eyes of Emilie which she later clears off. He fails to do anything to Fanda - a master of and in his own terms.