Final Rating: 4/5
When discussing cinematic canons, a few names are more prominent in the discussions. Lately, we have discussed the works of Chantal Akerman, Ingmar Bergman, and Akira Kurosawa, among other masters of the film form. Still, the organization of a film canon is Eurocentric, where the most of the works studied, exhibited, and programmed are from European and American filmmakers, followed by a few Asian directors, especially the Japanese ones.
Yet, the Global South, which is a central part of our planet, lacks representation culturally, dominated by the intellectual elites. Only a few directors manage to break the barrier of the cultural canons. One of them is the Indian master Satyajit Ray, an artist whose work spanned from the 1950s to the 1990s.
Ray’s first movie, 1955’s Pather Panchali, is among the most regarded films in history. It is the first part of a trilogy about Aparajito and Apur Sansar. Consequently, his filmography is so profound that he has multiple films in the so-called canon, such as The Music Room and Charaluta.
Beneath the multitude of his body of work, there is too much to discover. The popular filmmaker Wes Anderson, who is a fan of Satyajit Ray, has decided to champion the restoration of one of his undiscovered gems: Days and Nights in the Forest. The film received a 4K restoration in 2025 sponsored by The Film Foundation World Cinema Project and Film Heritage Foundation, in collaboration with Janus Films and The Criterion Collection. The material is from the original camera and sound negatives provided by Purnima Dutta, as well as the magnetic track preserved by BFI National Archive.
In Days and Nights in the Forest, the director follows the story of four friends, Ashim (Soumitra Chatterjee), Sanjoy (Subhendu Chatterjee), Hari (Samit Bhanja), and Shekhar (Rabi Ghosh), who flee Calcutta to travel to a rural city in India called Palamu. After they bribed a watchman into letting them into a guesthouse, the four friends meet a group of single women, with each of the members growing fondly through conversations that feature the forest as the background to the romance.
Adapted from the celebrated novel of the same title by Sunil Gangopadhyay, the film follows the traditional style of the director. Through its realistic approach to the medium, Ray analyzes Indian society through the interactions of the characters with their backgrounds and peers, studying the psyche of those who compose India.
Underneath the black-and-white cinematography by Soumendu Roy, the director frames the friends on the road, choosing the lack of light exposition, which highlights the black aspects of the film material. Ray shapes his formal ability through the notions of shadows and lightning exposure throughout the scenes of the probable couples in the woods, as they discuss their feelings, traumas, class differences, and the prospects for love.
It is a film about the perspectives of those characters, ranging from those urging to flee the chaos of the metropolis to those who had their hearts broken by a partner. These men use the different scenarios to shift their lives, leaving the wounds from the immense Indian city behind, projecting their hopes for the future on these women.
Days and Nights in the Forest by Satyajit Ray is a film about change and utilizing the road movie device to unveil the wounds of those tired of the big city, hurt by a broken heart, and those eager for a new reality. Underneath the impressive images of Soumendu Roy, Ray crafts a gem about the human psyche and the necessity of connecting with others.
Thank you to Cinetic Media and Janus Films for the screener.
