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Atlantic
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
The Best Way to Watch Movies This Summer
The question that beguiles almost every film fan, from the obsessive cineast to the casual enthusiast, is the simplest one: What should I watch next? Endless carousels on streaming services that feature very little of note don't provide much help. As a way to avoid decision paralysis, I always have at least one movie-viewing project going, a way to check boxes and spur myself toward new things to explore—be it running through an influential director's filmography, checking out the cinema of a particular country or era, or going one by one through a long-running series. Plenty of obvious candidates exist for these kinds of efforts, such as the diverse works of Stanley Kubrick or the films considered part of the French New Wave. But I've identified 12 collections that feel a little more idiosyncratic—more varied, and somewhat harder to find. They're ordered by how daunting they may seem based on the number of entries involved. The list starts with a simple trilogy of masterpieces and ends with a century-spanning challenge that only the nerdiest viewers are likely to undertake. The Apu Trilogy (1955–59) The defining work of the director Satyajit Ray's long career, The Apu Trilogy, played a significant role in bringing international attention to Indian cinema. But the films, released in the late '50s, also marked a seminal moment in multipart cinematic storytelling. Ray fashioned a bildungsroman that charts the childhood, adolescence, and adulthood of Apu, a boy who moves from rural Bengal to Calcutta, as his country dramatically changes in the early 20th century. The director's style is careful, poetic, and light on melodrama, but he involves the viewer so intimately in Apu's world that every major development hits with devastating force. The Apu Trilogy sits on every canonical-movie syllabus and has had obvious influence on filmmakers around the world, but this is not some homework assignment to get through; each of these films is sweet, relatable, and engrossing. As a bonus, check out The Music Room, which helped further bolster Ray's reputation around the same time. Where to start: The three films in the trilogy, Pather Panchali, Aparajito, and The World of Apu, are available to stream on the Criterion Channel, Kanopy, and Max. The Koker trilogy (1987–94) The Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami was always somewhat dismissive of the notion that these three movies were linked beyond their setting: the village of Koker, in northern Iran. But in addition to establishing Kiarostami as a globally recognized artist (and possibly his nation's greatest director), the works conjure a beguiling magic when viewed in order of release. The first, Where Is the Friend's House?, follows a grade-schooler who tries to find a schoolmate's home in rural Iran. The second, And Life Goes On, dramatizes the director's efforts to locate the actors involved with the prior movie after a devastating earthquake, and the third, Through the Olive Trees, revolves around the making of a small scene in the second. Together, they illustrate how Kiarostami blended fact and fiction, cinematic tricks and reality, as he examined the complexity of existence. Afterward, watch the wonderful drama Taste of Cherry, which the filmmaker considered to be an unofficial follow-up to the trilogy. The adventures of Antoine Doinel (1959–79) François Truffaut's Antoine Doinel films have much in common with The Apu Trilogy: They're stunning coming-of-age tales about a boy. But unlike Ray's movies (which were made over the course of four years), Truffaut's series starred the same actor (Jean-Pierre Léaud) over the course of two decades. The five installments chart a young Parisian's life as he grows from a rebellious teenager to a lovesick 20-something, married 30-something, and divorced 40-something. The saga is ambitious but lovely, and a great way to experience Truffaut's own growth as a director. He began as a rebel voice in the French New Wave, and went on to become one of the country's most revered artists. Six Moral Tales (1963–72) Another titan of the French New Wave, the director Éric Rohmer, has an intimidating (but wonderful) filmography dotted with various thematically linked stories. His most famous project is known as Six Moral Tales: a group of works produced over a nine-year period beginning in the early '60s. The entries each deal with complex, quiet crises of romance and temptation, always told with different characters and with evolving style. While they're often quite meditative and low on action, the tension of each unresolved choice, the flirtatious energy, and the gorgeous vacation settings make them perfect summer viewing. Where to start: The series begins with the short film The Bakery Girl of Monceau; all six movies, including the outstanding My Night at Maud's and Claire's Knee, are streaming on the Criterion Channel. Dekalog (1988) It's clear from watching his work that the Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski began his career as a documentarian—many of his dramas starred nonprofessional actors and were typically grounded in social realism. Those aesthetics are all present in his totemic Dekalog, 10 one-hour films that aired on Polish television in 1988. Set in a Warsaw tower block, each installment reckons with one of the Ten Commandments. The series is an austere, challenging, and perhaps overwhelming magnum opus. But while the films are sometimes direct and political, they can also be wryly funny and surreal. Kieślowski went on to create another grand series, the wonderful Three Colors, but there is nothing quite like the experience of taking in every angle of Dekalog. Where to start: Dekalog is best viewed in Commandment order, but you'll likely need to buy the Criterion box set of the collected works in order to see them. Kieślowski extended two episodes to feature length, and they are more readily accessible: A Short Film About Killing and A Short Film About Love, both available to stream on the Criterion Channel. The films of Claire Denis Tackling any director's body of work is a fun challenge—this whole list could have been populated with great artists whose films are a delight to delve through, such as Martin Scorsese, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Wong Kar-wai. Denis is one such great pick: She's among France's most exciting contemporary voices, having pushed the boundaries throughout her nearly 40-year career. Her debut feature, Chocolat, is a period piece that ran directly at the history of French colonial life in Cameroon; it startled audiences at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival. Denis has been surprising viewers ever since, making harsh yet involving works of drama, satire, and spiky romance. There's the thoughtful realism of 35 Shots of Rum and Nénette and Boni, bewildering genre movies such as the space-set High Life and the cannibal horror Trouble Every Day, and her transcendent masterpiece Beau Travail, which transposes the action of Herman Melville's Billy Budd to the French Foreign Legion in Djibouti. There is no 'easy' film in her oeuvre, but there's nothing boring, either—and Denis, still working in her late 70s, has shown no interest in slowing down. Twin Peaks (1990–2017) Much of David Lynch and Mark Frost's sprawling achievement exists on television, and Lynch himself (usually seen as the primary auteur) stepped away from the show for some periods. But as admirers continue to sift through Lynch's legacy after his death in January, it's becoming clearer that Twin Peaks is his most exemplary work. The show has a serialized, soapy premise that hooks the viewer from the first minute; it's also resolutely uninterested in answering big mysteries in a straightforward manner. Its tale is one to puzzle over for the rest of your life: beautiful, haunting, often hilarious, unforgettable. Plus, if you marathon the entire series—including the beguiling prequel film Fire Walk With Me —you'll see how Lynch adapted his distinctive aesthetic across three very different visual mediums: network television, arthouse cinema, and prestige cable. Where to start: Each of the show's three seasons is streaming on Mubi and Paramount+. Watch Fire Walk With Me (available on the Criterion Channel and Max) right before embarking on Season 3, known as Twin Peaks: The Return. The best known cinematic 'new waves' originate from countries such as France, Romania, and Taiwan—places where artistic explosions happened all at once, in many cases spurred by societal upheaval. But one of the most interesting (and still underexplored) is what's known as the American 'No Wave' movement, which began in the late 1970s. These films are loosely defined by ultra-indie storytelling and inspired by punk rock, glam fashion, and arthouse cinema. Enduring and vital directors such as Jim Jarmusch, Susan Seidelman, and Lizzie Borden came out of this school, along with less heralded figures such as Jamie Nares and the team of Scott B and Beth B. Where to start: Begin with Smithereens, a 1982 indie from Seidelman that follows a narcissistic young woman tearing through New York and Los Angeles in search of their disappearing punk scenes; it's streaming on the Criterion Channel and Max. From there, investigate the rest of Seidelman's filmography, then check out Abel Ferrara's early, grimy works (such as The Driller Killer) and Jarmusch's beginnings (starting with Permanent Vacation). Shōwa-era Godzilla (1954–75) Searching for a sprawling genre franchise that doesn't involve caped American superheroes or a British secret agent? Look no further than Godzilla, starting with the original stretch of 15 films released during the Shōwa era. The experience of plowing through these early films in the character's history is strange and delightful; it's also, thanks to the Criterion Collection's recent efforts, a beautiful one. The Godzilla movies changed over time from raw and frightening reckonings with post-nuclear Japan (in the form of a giant monster) to more fun and cartoonish outings, an evolution this specific period exhibits. Yet even at the franchise's silliest, it maintains a consistent focus on visual flourish and dizzying new monster designs. Where to start: Begin with 1954's Godzilla. The other biggest highlights of the classic period are Mothra vs. Godzilla; Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster; and the final installment, Terror of Mechagodzilla. All of them are streaming on the Criterion Channel and Max. Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995–2021) Digging into the world of anime is just about the most daunting viewing project imaginable: Alongside hundreds of films, there are seemingly countless series. These shows are also usually made up of hundreds or even thousands of episodes, and it can be very difficult to know which ones to check out. Neon Genesis Evangelion is regarded as among the medium's most defining franchises, but it isn't exactly breezy viewing: The story is dark, cataclysmic, and intent on deconstructing the clichés of the 'mecha' subgenre, in which teenage heroes pilot giant robotic suits to do battle with some epic threat. But there is nothing quite like this surreal, heady piece of science fiction, which is why it's endured so powerfully since premiering in 1995. Evangelion is also relatively digestible, with just 26 episodes in its original run—though there are also several movies that reimagine the show's controversial finale. Where to start: With the TV show, which is streaming on Netflix. The first full feature in the series, The End of Evangelion, is essential viewing (and also on Netflix). Approach the four later movies with more caution: Known as the Rebuild of Evangelion, they're a mix of recaps and bizarre narrative twists. (They're streaming on Prime Video.) The films of Clint Eastwood Working your way through the 40 films directed by Eastwood is a time-consuming but rewarding enterprise. Not only is he one of America's most iconic actors; he's also a two-time Academy Award winner for directing. Nonetheless, he remains somewhat unheralded for his cinematic eye. His movies span genres and tap many of the great performers of their era, while also offering a healthy mix of vehicles for himself—both those in which he'll often play flawed but charismatic antiheroes, and truly complex departures. Where to start: Make sure to watch Bird, Unforgiven, The Bridges of Madison County, and Letters From Iwo Jima if you want to view only a handful. (Iwo Jima is streaming on Prime Video; the other three are available to rent or purchase.) But even his most minor works have something special to offer; progressing through the entire oeuvre from his debut (1971's Play Misty for Me) onward is a real delight. Every Best Picture winner The 98 winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture are not the 98 best films ever made. A few are downright bad; others are watchable, if forgotten, bits of above-average entertainment. The list includes some undersung gems and, of course, some obvious classics. But watching every Best Picture winner is an incredible way to survey Hollywood's history: its booming golden age, which produced classics such as It Happened One Night and Casablanca; revolutionary moments in film storytelling ranging from kitchen-sink drama (Marty) to something far more lurid (Midnight Cowboy); a run of masterpieces in the '70s, followed by the gaudy '80s and the disjointed '90s. Though the Academy is often late to cinematic trends, the voting body's choices offer a way to understand how those styles will eventually reverberate through mainstream culture. Plus, you'll catch a bunch of interesting movies in the process. Where to start: They're all listed here. Starting at the beginning, with 1927's Wings, might be a tall order; that film and some of the other early winners are truly forgettable. It might be wiser to move backwards in time, filling in gaps in your personal-viewing history and catching up on classics you may not have seen.
Mint
20-06-2025
- Health
- Mint
Mercury poisoning in Perus Amazon threatens health disaster
Illegal gold mines pollute Peru's Loreto region Nearly 80% of people have mercury unsafe levels Pregnant women and children most at risk LIMA, June 20 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Indigenous and riverine communities in the Loreto region of the Peruvian Amazon have "chronic exposure" to mercury, according to a new study by the Center for Amazonian Scientific Innovation at Wake Forest University in the United States. The test results released this month show nearly 80% of the people tested late last year had levels of mercury far above the safe limits in six communities on the banks of the Nanay and Pintuyacu rivers. "The majority of the population is contaminated," said Jairo Reategui Davila, the Apu, or leader, of San Antonio de Nanay, one of the tested communities. "We call on the authorities to take action on the matter because we are very concerned," he said. The results showed 37% of the 273 men, women and children tested had levels of mercury at more than 10 ppm (parts per million) in their hair, compared to just 3% under the 2.2 ppm 'safe' limit established by the World Health Organization (WHO). Gold prices have soared by nearly 50% in the last year, beating successive record highs, and encouraging a flourishing illegal gold mining trade that is damaging local nature and biodiversity, and raising significant health concerns. Illegal miners use mercury to extract gold particles from the river silt and then burn off the toxic metal, which turns to vapour and is absorbed by surrounding plants, soil and rivers, said Claudia Vega, head of the mercury program at CINCIA. Mercury poisoning is associated with several health issues, including cognitive impairment in adults and irreversible developmental delays and learning difficulties for children and babies in the womb. Gabriel Barría, regional coordinator for heavy metals for the local health authority, said it was "very regrettable that villagers were highly contaminated" and blamed the spread of illegal gold mining for the mercury levels in Amazon rivers. He said the health authority did not have the budget to carry out tests for mercury and had only tested 12 villagers on a recent health visit relying on blood and urine samples. CINCIA said tests revealed an average level was 8.41 ppm, exceeding the WHO limit by nearly four times. Given that illegal mining in Loreto is fairly recent, there are no comprehensive studies on its health impact on the local population yet. But the levels in these initial tests are already higher than those in the Peruvian Amazon region most impacted by illegal gold mining, Madre de Dios, where 2012 tests showed the majority of adults had average mercury levels of 2.7ppm. Luis Fernandez, executive director of CINCIA and Research Professor at Wake Forest University, said if illegal mining continued to spread in Loreto, then villagers with already high mercury levels might begin to approach those close to the worst recorded case of mercury contamination. This includes Minamata Bay, the renowned case in Japan in the 1950s, where children were born with congenital deformities and neurological disabilities caused by a chemical factory dumping mercury into the water supply for decades. Vega from CINCIA, who led the study, said the results showed worrying "background" levels of mercury in the Loreto riparian communities. She said it could not be fully determined if the mercury came from naturally occurring sources or human-caused activities like illegal gold mining, but it was mostly caused by the villagers' diet fish-based diet. However, "several studies agree that the entry of mining into a territory tends to significantly increase mercury levels in the environment", she said. The newly released study found that people were mainly exposed to methylmercury, a highly toxic form that accumulates in the body.
Hindustan Times
06-06-2025
- Hindustan Times
Iron maidens: 200 years after the first one, where will trains take us next?
Apu and Durga hear a strange sound, of a kind they have never heard before. They run run run through tall grass to find out what is making the noise. They emerge from the grass to a sight that takes their breath away. Unfortunately, Durga stumbles and misses the spectacle. Her brother Apu stares, riveted: a steam engine, huffing and puffing, is pulling a passenger train. This is widely considered the most memorable scene in Satyajit Ray's classic, Pather Panchali (1955). Railways spelt magic. For young Apu and Durga. For most of us. It has been 200 years since the spell was first cast. The world's first steam-powered passenger train made its first run, from Stockton to Darlington in England, a distance of just under 42 km, in 1825. (The first passenger train journey in India, that famous one from Bombay to Thane, occurred 28 years later, in 1853). Trains have, of course, changed everything since. They have democratised travel, sped it up and made it more comfortable; changed how goods are moved, drawn hinterlands closer to markets; allowed remote regions to participate to a far greater extent in economies. They became, almost immediately, an integral part of economic progress. Food security, real-estate, defence: none of it was quite complete without the railroad. It would take the world a while to get used to these new speeds (of 50 to 80 kmph, at a time when cars averaged about 40 kmph). In 1830, in fact, a Liverpool-Manchester train ran over British Member of Parliament William Huskisson. He was attending the opening of a new rail link when he stepped from a train onto the tracks, with a few others. He was clipped by a rake on a parallel line, in what became the first widely reported death by passenger locomotive. It's a fatal error people continue to make; perhaps the brain cannot adequately assess something moving so fast. Every year in Mumbai, India's densest rail commuter hub, an estimated 2,500 people die while crossing the tracks, most of them unable to judge the time it will take the oncoming train to reach them. *** Back to the 1800s, the railways boosted the growth of cities and of empires. It became possible to live scores of kilometres away from work, and easier to rule continents where one had only the slimmest sliver of a claim. As these new links connected harbour towns and interiors, making business more profitable for trading companies, colonial powers such as the British used them to solidify their reign. In the US, the railroad networks shooting out across the continent spawned a new generation of millionaires. They also boosted an upwardly mobile middle-class that grew rich on investments in such companies, which saw stocks rise rapidly from 1865 all the way to the early stock-market bubble of 1873. The collapse would be swift and devastating: a sad and since-recurring tale of a fast-expanding industry and adventurous investment firms taking a tumble together. In early echoes of a pattern that continues to be repeated, banks and businesses that had leaned on each other, counting on the continued railroad boom to see them through, fell like dominoes, in what became known as the Panic of 1873, a downturn that spread all the way to Europe. *** The trains themselves chugged ever-forward. What started out as one type of rake, a steam engine pulling a set of carriages, grew to encompass a myriad forms. There would be a lot more belching of smoke and fumes before trains began to go electric. In fact, the world's first underground railroad system, set up in London in 1863, was powered by steam until 1890. These chugging engines would move troops, supplies and letters from home, during the Great War. Great big steam locomotives would play the sinister role of mass deportations to concentration camps, about two decades later, in what would come to be called World War 2. *** Across the colonies, by this point, a strange thing was happening. Disillusioned by their continued exclusion from their own growing economies, and tired of their second-class status — even as they harvested the fields for cotton and fought in the wars on behalf of their foreign rulers — large colonised populations began to get restive. In vast and diverse regions such as India and Africa, the cheap, fast-moving passenger trains were one of the things that made it easier to reach out across vast distances, and differences, and unite. (English, as a common language, would assist in this cause too; as would the radio, as a means of communication and broadcast.) Think about how often one sees the train in the 1982 film Gandhi. Think about how impossible the freedom rallies might have been without the ability to fly across the landscape and be in two distant places if not at once then at least in one day. *** Then the wars were over, freedom had been won. The sense of wonder, captured so evocatively by filmmakers, writers, poets and painters, faded a fair bit as new marvels took over: cars, planes, missions to the moon. Sample these awe-filled lines by the Scottish poet Robert Louis Stevenson, in his poem, From A Railway Carriage (1885)… Faster than fairies, faster than witches, Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches… Here is a cart run away in the road Lumping along with man and load; And here is a mill and there is a river: Each a glimpse and gone for ever! A very different view emerges, less than a century later, in the Jethro Tull rock classic Locomotive Breath (1971; lyrics by Ian Anderson). Here, the train serves as a metaphor for much of what it, and the industrial revolution, have enabled: explosions of human industry, activity and habitation: In the shuffling madness Of the locomotive breath Runs the all-time loser Headlong to his death Oh, he feels the piston scraping Steam breaking on his brow Old Charlie stole the handle And the train it won't stop Oh no way to slow down… No way to slow down No way to slow down No way to slow down No way to slow down *** Japan built the world's first high-speed train, the Shinkansen or New Trunk Line, nicknamed the bullet train for how fast it flew. Special tracks minimised friction; aerodynamic design raised speeds. At launch, the Shinkansen had a maximum speed of 210 kmph, in 1964. Speeds have since inched up steadily, to 320 kmph, then 443 kmph and now a high of 603 km per hour for its maglev or magnetic levitation rakes. China has used high-tech trains to reinforce its claims over autonomous regions on its fringes, such as Tibet, in a move that doubles as a symbol of its reach and power. These trains reach new kinds of highs. The Qinghai-Tibet link is currently the world's highest railway line, stretching about 2,000 km across the Himalayan plateau, from Xining in central China to Lhasa in Tibet. *** India is now entering a new rail era, with plush trains launched for the Everyman and plans for high-speed links. The country's vast population still depends on this extensive network, with the Indian Railways clocking the highest number of rides taken in the world: about 8 billion, across its 7,325 stations. The Indian Railways is also the country's second-largest employer after the Armed Forces (about 1.2 million are employed by the former; 1.4 million by the latter). Millions of train lovers, meanwhile, feel the same kind of thrill Durga and Apu did, when they hear the clacking or hoot that indicates a train will soon whizz by. (Ambi Parameswaran is a best-selling author and an independent brand coach. His latest book is Marketing Mixology. He can be reached at ambimgp@
News18
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- News18
Satyajit Ray Through Hindu Lens: The Brahmo Who Never Gave Up Brahman
Last Updated: This May 3, Satyajit Ray's cinema turns 70. The maestro, incidentally, would have turned 104 on May 2 On May 3, 1955, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, at its Textiles and Ornamental Arts of India exhibition, screened a film titled The Story of Apu and Durga, later to be titled Pather Panchali or Song of the Little Road. It was well received, although it ran without subtitles. This May 3, Satyajit Ray's cinema turns 70. The maestro, incidentally, would have turned 104 on May 2. If he were alive and still making movies, the most pressing question he would have faced could very likely be about his faith and spirituality. We live in a time of resurgent, assertive Hindutva and a highly reactive Islam. It is a time, ironically, like many of his movies, of black and white. The maestro would be pressed to take a side. It is not that he did not face that question during his lifetime. There had been a shrill crescendo of protests after his Devi (The Goddess) released in 1960. The movie is about a young woman who is tragically and almost forcibly elevated to divinity after her father-in-law dreams about her being the incarnation of the goddess. Hindu conservatives were also furious when Ray's Ganashatru (Enemy of the People) portrayed how the holy water or 'charanamrita" got contaminated because of official corruption and apathy, endangering thousands of lives. The narrative that Ray was unfairly critical of Hinduness got traction because of his Brahmo faith, a reformist and so-called 'progressive" tributary of Sanatan Dharma, pioneered by Raja Ram Mohan Roy. Ray, ironically, was one of the harshest critics of Bengal's communist regime, and never hesitated to speak the blunt truth even to the towering CPM patriarch and then chief minister, Jyoti Basu. His Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne and Hirak Rajar Deshe are trenchant critiques of totalitarian regimes. If one looks holistically at Satyajit Ray's entire body of work, a different picture emerges. By his own admission, he was against religious dogma and superstition. He was also questioning about organised religion, as we find him articulate in his last movie, Agantuk. But he was not against religion, spirituality, and mysticism. In fact, the social setting of almost all Ray movies is noticeably Hindu. Except for Shatranj Ke Khilari, there is not even one major Muslim character in his films, even in those set in pre-Partition, Muslim-dominant Bengal. He made an entire, dazzlingly successful detective movie, Sonar Kella, based on his own Feluda series on reincarnation and rebirth. His fascination and curiosity with 'jatishwar", or those who claim to remember their previous birth, finds its way even in films like Nayak. He portrays the impoverished village priest Harihar in the Apu trilogy with no malice but almost a tragic-nostalgic fondness. Portrayal of Apu's childhood has evoked comparisons with little Krishna's carefree, playful ways. Ray shunned the long, sermon-filled Brahmo services. His cinematic depiction of the good-intentioned but boring husband in Charulata, although made after Rabindranath Tagore's novel Nashto Neer, captures the character's lack of emotional and sexual vitality. The roots of Ray's spiritual vision lie in his childhood. In his essay Through Agnostic Eyes: Representations of Hinduism in the Cinema of Satyajit Ray, Chandok Sengoopta of Birkbeck College, London, writes: But first, we need to outline just what kind of Brahmo upbringing Ray had and how he reacted to it. Ray's father Sukumar Ray (1887–1923), who has long been iconic in Bengali literary history for his nonsense verse and other works for children, also distinguished himself as a printing technologist, a photographer, a publisher and magazine editor. Although a committed Brahmo, he and his young associates nearly brought about a split in the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj with their demands for sweeping reforms in structure, administration and ethical code. For Sukumar Ray, the Brahmo movement, despite commencing within orthodox Hinduism as a reform initiative, had diverged so greatly from the parent since then that it had become a sovereign faith, and he did not shy away from a public (and sharply polemical) debate with his close friend Rabindranath Tagore, who, belonging to the conservative Adi Brahmo Samaj, held that Brahmos, in spite of their rejection of many orthodox beliefs and practices, were still members of the larger Hindu family. Sukumar Ray, of course, died at an early age and Satyajit was brought up by his mother Suprabha, whose understanding of the Brahmo-Hindu relationship was interestingly different from her late husband's. Diligent as she was in attending Brahmo services and shunning festivals such as the 'idolatrous" Durga Puja, she wore the iron bangle and vermilion like all Hindu married women. Apart from giving them up after losing her husband, she never dressed again in anything other than the orthodox Hindu widow's plain white sari (than), despite being reminded by no less a Brahmo luminary than Dr Kadambini Ganguli that her own father-in-law Upendrakishore Ray had decried this custom. It is perhaps this confluence of childhood strains that makes Ray grey. While he captures the riverbanks and temples of Banaras mesmerisingly in Aparajito (1956) and Joi Baba Felunath (1979), in his Abhijan (1962), a Christian convert feels uncomfortable serving food to the upper-caste hero because she had belonged to an 'untouchable" caste before her conversion. But the clincher that he never snapped away from his Sanatan roots is there in his last movie, Agantuk. Unlike an Alfred Hitchcock, Quentin Tarantino, or Manoj Night Shyamalan, Ray was not a director who did cameos in his own films. But in Agantuk, a film he shot in his final days, he made an exception. He sang the iconic ode to Shri Krishna in his own quivering yet baritone voice: 'Hari Haray namah Krishna Yadavay namah…" top videos View all A final clue to his spiritual self before moving on from the mortal. Abhijit Majumder is a senior journalist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views. tags : Cinema hindu satyajit ray Location : New Delhi, India, India First Published: May 03, 2025, 07:00 IST News opinion Opinion | Satyajit Ray Through Hindu Lens: The Brahmo Who Never Gave Up Brahman
The Independent
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Simpsons voice actor says stepping away from Apu role ‘required a deep dive'
The Simpsons voice actor Hank Azaria has explained in a new interview why he chose to step back from voicing Apu Nahasapeemapetilon following controversy surrounding the character. Azaria voiced the Indian shopkeeper on the animated comedy for 30 years, but his depiction faced high-profile criticism in 2017 with the release of a documentary titled The Problem with Apu. The film saw comedian Hari Kondabolu investigate why the character was problematic and a racial stereotype. Simpsons writer, producer and erstwhile showrunner Mike Reiss confirmed in 2018 that the sitcom had decided to retire Apu. In a new discussion on the topic, Azaria has told the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast that his decision to step away from Apu 'required a deep dive'. Azaria explained that the character's voice was inspired by Peter Sellars's performance in the 1968 film The Party, where the British actor wore brownface. 'What's the difference between Inspector Clouseau, a silly French voice, or Doctor Strangelove, a silly German voice, and Hrundi V Bakshi, a rather silly Indian voice?' asked Azaria. 'And it's a question I still get asked. People will say comments still to this day, 'Why can you do [Italian Simpsons character] Luigi and that's not offensive? Why can you talk like [stereotypical hick character] Cletus and that's not a problem, but you can't do Apu? Right?' 'Honestly, at first, I thought let me look into this, and then I'll go back to doing the voice, and say I understand, but I'm going to keep doing this. And I was surprised myself that I came down on, 'No, actually, I think I am participating in a harm here.'' He also said he is 'not a hero' and had a 'professional public decision to make' when he left the character. The 60-year-old went on to express his regret after learning that Apu was often cited when hate crimes were committed against South Asian people. 'It became a slur when convenience store guys were stabbed or shot or robbed, you know,' he noted. 'There's all this other stereotyping and things that have teeth in them that affect people of colour in this country. So, while Apu might not be the most important thing in the world, it's a window into something quite important.' Azaria had previously apologised for voicing Apu. In 2021 he told the Armchair Expert podcast that: 'I was speaking at my son's school, I was talking to the Indian kids there because I wanted to get their input. A 17-year-old ... he's never even seen The Simpsons but knows what Apu means. It's practically a slur at this point. All he knows is that is how his people are thought of and represented to many people in this country.' 'I really do apologise,' Azaria continued. 'It's important. I apologise for my part in creating that and participating in that. Part of me feels like I need to go to every single Indian person in this country and personally apologise. And sometimes I do.'
