Kanchenjungha

Satyajit Ray's first colour film, from a screenplay he wrote directly for the screen. It takes place in Darjeeling. A well-off family is on the last day of a holiday. The father wants to marry his daughter to a wealthy engineer and expects it settled today. As the family members wander the mountain paths, everyone is talking to someone, and all the conversations touch the same matter. The formal idea is this: the narrative runs in roughly real time. The length of the film and the length of the story are close to the same. The second idea is in the weather: the mountain is behind mist and never appears in the whole film. The weather becomes the emotional indicator of the story. Ray wrote the music as well; this is among the first films for which he composed himself. Chhabi Biswas plays the father. A fine work for anyone who likes Ray's cinema and family drama built on conversation. For a viewer wanting incident, nothing happens across the film; the entire matter is what is said and not said during a walk.