''Distant Thunder'' (; translit. Ashani Sanket) is a 1973 Bengali film by the Indian director

Satyajit Ray Satyajit Ray (; 2 May 1921 – 23 April 1992) was an Indian film director, screenwriter, author, lyricist, magazine editor, illustrator, calligraphy, calligrapher, and composer. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influ ...

, based on the novel by the same name by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay. Unlike most of Ray's earlier films, ''Distant Thunder'' was filmed in colour. It stars

Soumitra Chatterjee Soumitra Chatterjee (also spelt as Chattopadhyay; ; 19 January 193515 November 2020) was an Indian film actor, play-director, playwright, writer, thespian and poet. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential actors in the histor ...

, who headlined numerous Ray films, and the Bangladeshi actress

Bobita Farida Akhtar Poppy, known by her stage name Babita, (born 30 July 1953) is a Bangladeshi film actress. She is best known for her performance in Satyajit Ray's ''Distant Thunder (1973 film), Distant Thunder'', a novel adaptation about the Benga ...

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'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', 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 ( ) is a Historical geography, historical geographical, ethnolinguistic and cultural term referring to a region in the Eastern South Asia, eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. The region of Benga ...

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 (; ) is a ''Varna (Hinduism), varna'' (theoretical social classes) within Hindu society. The other three varnas are the ''Kshatriya'' (rulers and warriors), ''Vaishya'' (traders, merchants, and farmers), and ''Shudra'' (labourers). Th ...

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

as Gangacharan Chakravarti *

as Angana/Gangacharan's wife * Chitra Banerjee as Moti * Govinda Chakravarti - Dinabandhu *

Anil Ganguly Anil Ganguly (26 January 1933 – 15 January 2016) was an Indian film director and screenwriter, who worked in Hindi cinema from 1970s to 2001. He is best known for Jaya Bhaduri starrer, '' Kora Kagaz'' (1974) and the Raakhee starrer '' Ta ...

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 Sandhya Roy is an Indian actress and politician. One of the most successful actresses of Bengali cinema, she reigned as a leading actress for approximately 30 years. She has received numerous awards including four BFJA Awards and a Filmfare A ...

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 was 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 2000. ...

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 ''The Apu Trilogy'' is a celebrated series of three Indian Bengali-language drama films directed by Satyajit Ray: ''Pather Panchali'' (1955), '' Aparajito'' (1956) and '' The World of Apu'' (1959). The trilogy's evocative score was composed by R ...

'' (in its casting of Chatterjee and in it being an adaptation of another Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay 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 defined as 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 parti ...

Tom Milne Tom Milne (2 April 1926 – 14 December 2005) was a British film critic. See also After war service, he studied English and French at Aberdeen University and later at the Sorbonne. Interested in the theatre too, he wrote for the magazine ...

of '' Time Out'' 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 continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

'' 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 Amit Dutta (born 1977 in Jammu) is an Indian experimental filmmaker and writer. He is considered to be one of the most significant contemporary practitioners of experimental cinema, known for his distinctive style of filmmaking rooted in field-re ...

included the film in his personal top ten (for "

The Sight & Sound Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time The ''Sight & Sound'' Greatest Films of All Time 2012 was a worldwide opinion poll conducted by ''Sight & Sound'' and published in the magazine's September 2012 issue. ''Sight & Sound'', published by the British Film Institute, has conducted a pol ...

" poll).

Awards

;

Berlin International Film Festival The Berlin International Film Festival (), usually called the Berlinale (), is an annual film festival held in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festival has been held every February since 1978 and is one of Europ ...

* 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 The National Film Award for Best Bengali Feature Film is one of the National Film Awards presented annually by the National Film Development Corporation of India. It is one of several awards presented for feature films and awarded with Rajat Ka ...

Ashani Sanket ''Distant Thunder'' (; 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 films, ''Distant Thunder'' was ...

National Film Award for Best Music Direction The National Film Award for Best Music Direction (the Silver Lotus Award) is an honour presented annually at the National Film Awards by the National Film Development Corporation of India to a musician who has composed the best score for films ...

- Satyajit Ray *

National Film Award for Best Cinematography The National Film Award for Best Cinematography is one of the National Film Awards presented annually by the National Film Development Corporation of India. It is one of several awards presented for feature films and awarded with Rajat Kamal (S ...

- 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 Films about social realism 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 Indian drama films