Movie of the Week: DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE FOREST (Satyajit Ray, 1970)
The time has come for my return
Hi there. If you missed me, thank you for being patient. If you didn’t, this must suck for you. I started the year by writing and directing my first short in ten years, then promptly dropped off the face of the earth as I rammed that project through post, started a new job, navigated the fallout of a Mormon from Utah smashing into my car while it was parked, and got my life together in a bunch of other ways. Something else I did during all that was catch the 4K DCP of Days and Nights in the Forest when it played the Egyptian back in March. As a Ray superfan, I had stubbornly kept this one on my watchlist for years because I wanted to wait until I could see a proper restoration in theaters (rather than watch the 480p YouTube rip with no English subtitles). So finally getting to see it, as a new version of my life was taking shape around me, was an experience that I’ll cherish for a long time. Based on Sunil Gangopadhyay’s novel of the same name, Days and Nights follows a group of four single guys — all educated, but with clear differences among them — on a languid holiday from Calcutta life out in tribal lands. We get to know Asim (Soumitra Chatterjee), Hari (Samit Bhanja), Sanjoy (Subhendu Chatterjee), and Shekhar (Rabi Ghosh) as they take over a rental house that they haven’t actually booked and impose their trivial requests on the local folk. While I personally would have watched them bicker, booze, and brawl for a whole movie (especially Ghosh’s Shekhar, who had everyone in the theater cackling), this story was always going to be about what happens to these men when beautiful women of the same social class arrive in town. Aparna (Sharmila Tagore) and her widowed sister-in-law Jaya (Kaberi Bose) shatter the group dynamic, and the resulting reconfigurations are consistently surprising. When all is said and done, one realizes that Ray has covered a stunning amount of ground here; like his best work, and like the best movies in general, Days and Nights in the Forest is not only a story in the world, but also the Story of the World. The fact that it’s his funniest is just the cherry on top.
Coming soon to the Criterion Channel.