Days and Nights in the Forest marks an unexpected turn in Satyajit Ray’s work. Distancing himself from the portrayal of social structures in his previous films, here he develops a moral tale. Five urbanites escape from Calcutta; yet the forest fails to offer them their hoped-for refuge, but rather a theatre that reveals hypocrisy, desire and disarray. Chekhov-like, Ray compassionately observes the petty deeds of human cowardice and inherits from Renoir — who Ray had worked with on the shoot of The River— a mobile gaze that allows them to move around in a seemingly open frame which is nonetheless criss-crossed by myriad tensions. With an economy of means, a precise use of silences and minimal gestures, the film transforms this experience of nature into a lesson in ethics: a delicate probing of modern and masculine vanities and an invitation to gauge our relationship to the world. A day in the country in Bengal.
Jérôme Baron.
Restored print
