So this is a movie about a family living in poverty in rural India in the 1920s. And when I say “in poverty” I mean by the standards of their village — one of the through-lines is the derision heaped on them by their fellow villagers, who feel above them, and the mother’s struggle to retain dignity in the face of enforced indignity.

I don’t want to say too much more about the movie than that, because it’s not as if there’s a ton of plot in it to begin with — its 2+ hours never feel slow, but they’re full of little domestic moments, for the most part, and if you retell the story straight up, you could do it in maybe three sentences without leaving out anything important.

Well, anything important except the whole core of what the movie is, anyway — a deeply realistic (Satyajit Ray, the director, was influenced by Renoir and made the movie in a cinematic world steeped in Italian neorealism; many of the actors aren’t professional actors at all) portrait of the daily struggles and delights of a family on (and sometimes over) the edge of disaster.

This is the first volume of the Apu Trilogy; Apu is a small (six-year-old?) boy in this movie, and my understanding is that the other two movies follow him as he grows into an adult… but I’ve been skimming descriptions to avoid spoilers, so I guess I’ll find out later. Once this project is done, I’m definitely going to go back and watch the sequels.

Really great stuff, in a quiet low-key way.