Aranyer Din Ratri | |
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A poster for Aranyer Din Ratri
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Directed by | Satyajit Ray |
Written by | Satyajit Ray, from a novel by Sunil Gangopadhyay |
Starring |
Soumitra Chatterjee, Sharmila Tagore Aparna Sen |
Music by | Satyajit Ray |
Cinematography | Soumendu Roy |
Release date
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Running time
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115 minutes |
Country | India |
Language | Bengali |
Full movie on YouTube |
Aranyer Din Ratri (Bengali: অরণ্যের দিনরাত্রি Araṇyēra Dinarātri, Days and Nights in the Forest) is an Indian Bengali adventure drama film released in 1970 and directed by Satyajit Ray. It is based upon the Bengali novel of the same name by Sunil Gangopadhyay. It was one of the earliest films to employ the literary technique of the carnivalesque. The film was nominated for the Golden Bear for Best Film at the 20th Berlin International Film Festival. A sequel Abar Aranye directed by Goutam Ghose was released in 2003.
The plot of the movie goes back to a similar outing the writer Sunil Gangopadhyay took in the early days of his poetic career. The story unfolds around a group of four friends, quite unlike each other and yet bonded together deeply. The four friends are all educated and come from different layers of society, but the urge to escape from the daily grinding of city forces them to go out into the land of tribes.
Of the four friends, Asim (Soumitra Chatterjee), the leader of the pack, owns the car they drive in, has a cushy job, likes the company of girls and yet is very conscious of how he should be perceived by them. Sanjoy (Subhendu Chatterjee) is a labour executive but would ideally want to immerse himself in literature. Hari (Samit Bhanja), a frank and straightforward cricketer, wants to forget the girl who dumped him. Shekhar (Rabi Ghosh) is the jester of the party, the only one without a job. He has a roving eye but stays sober when his friends get drunk and vent their frustrations. They set out for the tribal Palamau, in Bihar, to tear themselves away from their regulated city life. They had read legends about this land, the tribal women who are open and simple and beautiful. Wanting to break rules, they force a stay in a forest rest house by bribing the chowkidar, burn a copy of a newspaper in a symbolic gesture of cutting ties from civilization, deliberate on whether to shave or not and walk through the forest to get drunk at a country liquor shop. Hari gets close to tribal Santhal girl Duli (Simi Garewal) when she approaches the group for extra drink.