Distant thunder

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Movie
German title Distant thunder
Original title অশনি সংকেত
(Ashani Sanket)
Country of production India
original language Bengali
Publishing year 1973
length 97 minutes
Rod
Director Satyajit Ray
script Satyajit Ray
production Sarbani Bhattacharya
music Satyajit Ray
camera Soumendu Roy
cut Dulal Dutta
occupation

Far Thunder ( Bengali : অশনি সংকেত , Aśani Saṃket ) is an Indian feature film by Satyajit Ray from 1973. It was based on the novel Ashani Sanket by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay .

action

The educated Brahmin Gangacharan has just settled in a Bengali village with his wife . He overcomes the distance between the established farmers by offering them to work as a teacher for their children and to hold religious ceremonies ( pujas ) (note: religious rites in Hinduism are mostly only allowed to be performed by brahmins). The Second World War also casts its shadow on the remote village. The villagers don't know who is fighting, and Gangacharan knows little more than that Japan has taken Singapore. The distant noise of fighter planes sparks rumors that a rice shortage is imminent. The traders are also holding back rice to increase their profits.

An existence begins for the village population as for animals, they roam around and beg for food. Gangacharan has made provisions for himself in good time, but his rice supplies will not last long either. His wife Ananga wants to work for Reis, but Gangacharan, as a brahmin, is shocked to think that his wife does physical labor outside the home. But soon he is forced to put his concerns aside and Ananga works with the other women in the village.

Jadu, an ugly man with a face covered with burn scars, offers Chutki rice to the villager if she goes with him and is obviously of sexual service to him. She refuses, but hunger later drives her to give in.

Ananga sends Gangacharan with her golden bracelet to Reis in a neighboring village. While he is on the road, she goes into the forest with other women for edible tubers and is attacked by a man. Her friend Chutki kills him with an iron bar. Out of hunger, Chutki goes back with the scarred face for rice on the way back.

A woman of the untouchable caste is the first to starve in the village. Gangacharan breaks a taboo when he feels her pulse and arranges for an appropriate cremation .

At the end of the film, Ananga is pregnant and the villagers can be seen moving away in silhouette in search of food. The last shot shows the sentence: Over five million Bengals died of hunger and epidemics in what became known as the man-made famine of 1943.

background

The film is set in a small village at the time of the great Bengal famine of 1943–1944 under British rule. During the decisive phase of the Second World War in Asia, the British government withheld civilian food supplies for its members of the army and the rising prices due to additional speculative food shortages are causing a famine among the Bengali population.

The film is based on the novel of the same name by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay , which already provided the template for the films in the Apu trilogy . The events that led to the famine are observed in the microcosm of the village and the changes in the life and behavior of the villagers are shown. There are no mountains of corpses.

Ray's second color film was released in Indian cinemas on August 15, 1973 after its screening at the 1973 Berlinale . The film won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale . For this reason it should be shown at the anniversary Berlinale 2010 in the program of the retrospective; the project failed because there is no longer a playable copy of Ferner Donner .

Reviews

“Despite the unyielding view of suffering, death, the madness of a human disaster, Ray maintains a distant gaze: images of unspoiled nature and leitmotifs - photos of butterflies that don't fly. An elegiac rather than accusatory film "

- Wolfgang Jacobsen in 50 Years of the Berlinale, page 204/2005

Awards

Individual evidence

  1. ^ His Career ( Memento of December 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive )

Web links