Ballade vom Weg (1955)

Ballade vom Weg: Directed by Satyajit Ray. With Kanu Bannerjee, Karuna Bannerjee, Chunibala Devi, Uma Das Gupta. Impoverished priest Harihar Ray, dreaming of a better life for himself and his family, leaves his rural Bengal village in search of work.

“What a wonderful film. For those who have not watched any films from India or heard of Ray, I strongly recommend it. Full of sadness, hope, innocence, and despair, it is an emotionally evocative portrait of the life of an Indian family, their trials, and their courage and persistence throughout. They go on, not because they are exceptional, but because they must, because they are human.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eRay does a masterful job of capturing the simple joys of childhood, and the ambitions and dreams which make us all human, regardless of where we are. Simple scenes such as a disfigured elderly woman seated on a porch, singing of her approaching death, are very moving. I have never seen the basic elements of life treated with such an incisive yet soft touch as Ray has in this film. It is wonderful to watch in comparison to the broad writing strokes and vulgar generalities of most directing and writing today. At the risk of sounding trite, this is a film which is not merely entertainment or art, but one which reaches into your heart and makes a place for itself there. It belongs there.”