Please login to continue.
Reviews of Days and Nights in the Forest
Displaying all 2 reviews
davecito !
14Aug11
Finding or seeing this one is quite a challenge in the US.
When I first saw this, I did make some superficial, personal comparisons – Yasujiro Ozu and Eric Rohmer both sprang to mind. Like the best of both, this film is unhurried and methodical in its’ storytelling, and strikes something of a balance between the remarkable interpersoanl dialogue of Rohmer and the reliance on subtle gestures and eye contact we see in the films of Ozu and Mikio Naruse. Those filmmakers are all people Ray expressed some admiration for, without going so far as to mention them as influences (and his career predates most of the feature work of Rohmer), but as a film it certainly has some accidental (perhaps) similarities.
As with a few earlier films (most famously “Charulata”), this film does explore – with great subtleties – the slow changes in sexual politics in a conservative society like India – note the scene involving the park ranger and who resolves the conflict that emerges, and also note the picnic scene immediately afterwards. These scenes are extremely quiet and subtle in how they’re played out, but the underlying psychology is close to revolutionary.
The camera work is excellent throughout – very still, nearly meditative, and does a fantastic job of really pulling you into the characters.
Of Ray’s top-shelf films, this is one of the least discussed, but one of the best.
- Currently 5.0/5 Stars.
harrycaul
4Mar11
Days and Nights in the Forest was my first Satyajit Ray and it’s still my favourite of the handful of his films I’ve seen to date. I’m going to struggle to write about this one, I can tell, because I don’t think I can adequately explain why I find such an apparently simple movie so uniquely profound. In terms of plot, there’s nothing to it; it’s just about four well-to-do, westernised friends from Calcutta who spend a few days in the country to help one of their number, a celebrated cricketer, get over being jilted by his girlfriend. Rude and arrogant at the start, the men are each improved over the course of the film, to greater and lesser degrees, by their surroundings and experiences. The miraculous thing about Ray’s direction is that, not only does he manage to turn the forest and countryside into an enchanted realm – where fundamental improvements of character seem entirely justified, even inevitable – he somehow manages to make the viewer feel changed for the better, too, by the experience of watching his film. It’s one of those very rare movies that, for a short time at least, makes the real world feel like a more magical place after you’ve seen it. Sharmila Tagore is very memorable as the elegant, enigmatic and supremely intelligent object of one of the men’s affection. Renoir fans will be strongly reminded of the equally magical Partie de Campagne.
- Currently 5.0/5 Stars.