translit.
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus '' trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or ...
Ashani Sanket) is a 1973 Bengali film by the Indian director
Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray (; 2 May 1921 – 23 April 1992) was an Indian director, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, author, essayist, lyricist, magazine editor, illustrator, calligrapher, and music composer. One of the greatest auteurs of fil ...
, based on the novel by the same name by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay.
Unlike most of Ray's earlier films, ''Distant Thunder'' was filmed in colour. It stars
Soumitra Chatterjee
Soumitra Chatterjee (also spelt as Chattopadhyay; 16 June 193515 November 2020) was an Indian film actor, play-director, playwright, writer, thespian and poet. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential actors in the history of ...
, who headlined numerous Ray films, and the Bangladeshi actress
Bobita
Farida Akhtar Poppy, known by her stage name Babita, is a Bangladeshi film actress. She is a popular actress in Bangladeshi films of the 1970s. She is best known for her performance in Satyajit Ray's '' Distant Thunder'', a novel adaptation abou ...
in her only prominent international role. Today the film features in ''The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made''.The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made by the film critics of ''The New York Times'', '' The New York Times'', 2002. It marked the debut of the theatre star Mrityunjay Sil.
Overview
The film is set in a village in the Indian province of Bengal during World War II, and examines the effect of the Great Famine of 1943 on the villages of Bengal through the eyes of a young Brahmin doctor-teacher, Gangacharan, and his wife, Angana. Ray shows the human scale of a cataclysmic event that killed more than 3 million people. The film unfolds at a leisurely pace that reflects the rhythms of village life, but gradually shows the breakdown of traditional village norms under the pressure of hunger and starvation.Overview '' The New York Times''.
Cast
*
Soumitra Chatterjee
Soumitra Chatterjee (also spelt as Chattopadhyay; 16 June 193515 November 2020) was an Indian film actor, play-director, playwright, writer, thespian and poet. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential actors in the history of ...
as Gangacharan Chakravarti
*
Bobita
Farida Akhtar Poppy, known by her stage name Babita, is a Bangladeshi film actress. She is a popular actress in Bangladeshi films of the 1970s. She is best known for her performance in Satyajit Ray's '' Distant Thunder'', a novel adaptation abou ...
as Angana/Gangacharan's wife
* Chitra Banerjee as Moti
* Govinda Chakravarti - Dinabandhu
* Anil Ganguly as Nibaran
* Noni Ganguly as Scarface' Jadu
* Debatosh Ghosh as Adhar
* Ramesh Mukherjee as Biswas
* Sheli Pal as Mokshada
* Suchita Ray Chaudhury as Khenti
* Sandhya Roy as Chutki
* Mrityunjay Sil as Ajay (Cameo)
Reception
Vincent Canby of '' The New York Times'' called the film "moving" and "elegiac". He remarks that the film "has the impact of an epic without seeming to mean to" and noted various connections with Ray's own '' Apu Trilogy'' (in its casting of Chatterjee and in it being an adaptation of another Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay novel). "It is, however, very different from those early films" he writes, "It is the work of a director who has learned the value of narrative economy to such an extent that 'Distant Thunder,' which is set against the backdrop of the 'manmade' famine that wiped out 5 million people in 1943, has the simplicity of a fable."
Tom Milne
Tom Milne (2 April 1926 – 14 December 2005) was a British film critic. See also
After war service, he studied English and French at Aberdeen University and later at the Sorbonne. Interested in the theatre too, he wrote for the magazine '' ...
of ''
Time Out
Time-out, Time Out, or timeout may refer to:
Time
* Time-out (sport), in various sports, a break in play, called by a team
* Television timeout, a break in sporting action so that a commercial break may be taken
* Timeout (computing), an enginee ...
'' calls the film " stant thunder, indeed; a superb film." Dennis Schwartz gave the film an A- and called it " gentle humanist film that informs the world that over five million died of starvation and epidemics in Bengal."
Jay Cocks
John C. "Jay" Cocks Jr. (born January 12, 1944) is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is a graduate of Kenyon College.Time'' echoes Canby's assessment of it as a " fable", writing: "Distant Thunder has the deliberate, unadorned reality of a folk tale, a fable of encroaching, enlarging catastrophe." He calls the film "superb and achingly simple ... Numbers as huge as 5 million"can be dangerous. A tragedy of such magnitude becomes an event abstracted by arithmetic. But Ray's artistry alters the scale. His concentrating on just a few victims of the famine causes such massive loss to become real, immediate. Ray makes numbers count."
21st National Film Awards
The 21st National Film Awards, presented by Directorate of Film Festivals, the organisation set up by Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, India to felicitate the best of Indian Cinema released in the year 1973. Ceremony took place in Oct ...
Ashani Sanket
''Distant Thunder'' ( bn, অশনি সংকেত; translit. Ashani Sanket) is a 1973 Bengali film by the Indian director Satyajit Ray, based on the novel by the same name by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay.
Unlike most of Ray's earlier ...