Aranyer Din Ratri

In late 60s four friends disconnect from the chaos of the metro city Kolkata and go on an unplanned trip to the jungle. They occupy the forest bungalow and interact with the local tribal people, drink local alcohol Mahua and intend to break free from the norms of bourgeois city life

It’s may not be always required or possible to be faithful to the novel a 100%. Ray could take the essence of the fiction and retell the story in the form of movie. It seems there are no unnecessary scenes anywhere in the length of the film. All shots are meaningful and necessary and are “stiched” in a way which effectively and effortlessly drives the story forward and keep the audience interested.

The film is visually rich and the shot compositions seem to justify the needs of the underlying meaning of the particular shots .

One could observe interesting use of semiotics to have more insight into the characters. All actors never seemed to ‘act’ at all. The audience becomes a part of the film as if eavesdropping into their lives and invisibly enter their realm. Ray definitely knew the trick of motivating every actor (no matter how ‘trivial’ their roles were) to involve themselves fully into the characters and get the best out of them. Rabi Ghosh remains my personal favourite

Ray’s portrayal of women from the city bourgeois to the tribal.

The credits created using stencils certainly involved a lot of manual hard work, which we, at this digital drag and drop era of editing will hardly realize.