''Distant Thunder'' ( bn, অশনি সংকেত; translit. Ashani Sanket) is a 1973 Bengali film by the Indian director Satyajit Ray, based on the novel by the same name by

Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay () (12 September 1894 – 1 November 1950) was an Indian writer in the Bengali language. His best known works are the autobiographical novel, '' Pather Panchali'' (''Song of the Little Road''), ''Aparajito (Undefeat ...

. Unlike most of Ray's earlier films, ''Distant Thunder'' was filmed in colour. It stars Soumitra Chatterjee, who headlined numerous Ray films, and the Bangladeshi actress

Bobita Farida Akhtar Poppy, known by her stage name Babita, is a Bangladeshi film actress. She is a popular actress in Bangladeshi films of the 1970s. She is best known for her performance in Satyajit Ray's '' Distant Thunder'', a novel adaptation abou ...

in her only prominent international role. Today the film features in ''The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made''.The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made
by the film critics of ''The New York Times'', ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', 2002. It marked the debut of the theatre star Mrityunjay Sil.

Overview

The film is set in a village in the Indian province of

Bengal Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predom ...

during World War II, and examines the effect of the Great Famine of 1943 on the villages of Bengal through the eyes of a young

Brahmin Brahmin (; sa, ब्राह्मण, brāhmaṇa) is a varna as well as a caste within Hindu society. The Brahmins are designated as the priestly class as they serve as priests ( purohit, pandit, or pujari) and religious teachers ( ...

doctor-teacher, Gangacharan, and his wife, Angana. Ray shows the human scale of a cataclysmic event that killed more than 3 million people. The film unfolds at a leisurely pace that reflects the rhythms of village life, but gradually shows the breakdown of traditional village norms under the pressure of hunger and starvation.Overview
''

''.

Cast

* Soumitra Chatterjee as Gangacharan Chakravarti *

as Angana/Gangacharan's wife * Chitra Banerjee as Moti * Govinda Chakravarti - Dinabandhu * Anil Ganguly as Nibaran * Noni Ganguly as Scarface' Jadu * Debatosh Ghosh as Adhar * Ramesh Mukherjee as Biswas * Sheli Pal as Mokshada * Suchita Ray Chaudhury as Khenti * Sandhya Roy as Chutki * Mrityunjay Sil as Ajay (Cameo)

Reception

Vincent Canby Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film and theatre critic who served as the chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1969 until the early 1990s, then its chief theatre critic from 1994 until his death in ...

of ''

'' called the film "moving" and "elegiac". He remarks that the film "has the impact of an epic without seeming to mean to" and noted various connections with Ray's own '' Apu Trilogy'' (in its casting of Chatterjee and in it being an adaptation of another

novel). "It is, however, very different from those early films" he writes, "It is the work of a director who has learned the value of narrative economy to such an extent that 'Distant Thunder,' which is set against the backdrop of the 'manmade' famine that wiped out 5 million people in 1943, has the simplicity of a

fable Fable is a literary genre: a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a particular m ...

." Tom Milne of ''

Time Out Time-out, Time Out, or timeout may refer to: Time * Time-out (sport), in various sports, a break in play, called by a team * Television timeout, a break in sporting action so that a commercial break may be taken * Timeout (computing), an engine ...

'' calls the film " stant thunder, indeed; a superb film." Dennis Schwartz gave the film an A- and called it " gentle humanist film that informs the world that over five million died of starvation and epidemics in Bengal."

Jay Cocks John C. "Jay" Cocks Jr. (born January 12, 1944) is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is a graduate of Kenyon College.Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...

'' echoes Canby's assessment of it as a "

", writing: "Distant Thunder has the deliberate, unadorned reality of a folk tale, a fable of encroaching, enlarging catastrophe." He calls the film "superb and achingly simple ... Numbers as huge as 5 million"can be dangerous. A tragedy of such magnitude becomes an event abstracted by arithmetic. But Ray's artistry alters the scale. His concentrating on just a few victims of the famine causes such massive loss to become real, immediate. Ray makes numbers count."

Legacy

In 2012, filmmaker Amit Dutta included the film in his personal top ten (for " The Sight & Sound Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time" poll).

Awards

; Berlin International Film Festival * 1973: Golden Bear for Best Film ;

21st National Film Awards The 21st National Film Awards, presented by Directorate of Film Festivals, the organisation set up by Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, India to felicitate the best of Indian Cinema released in the year 1973. Ceremony took place in Oct ...

* National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Bengali -

Ashani Sanket ''Distant Thunder'' ( bn, অশনি সংকেত; translit. Ashani Sanket) is a 1973 Bengali film by the Indian director Satyajit Ray, based on the novel by the same name by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay. Unlike most of Ray's earlier ...

* National Film Award for Best Music Direction - Satyajit Ray * National Film Award for Best Cinematography - Soumendu Roy

References

External links

as ''Asani Sanket'' at SatyajitRay.org
* * {{Famine in India Films directed by Satyajit Ray 1973 films 1973 drama films Bengali-language Indian films Films set in 1943 Films set in Bengal Golden Bear winners Indian World War II films Social realism in film Films whose cinematographer won the Best Cinematography National Film Award Films about famine Films with screenplays by Satyajit Ray Best Bengali Feature Film National Film Award winners 1970s Bengali-language films Films based on works by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay