Nazarin

Between 1955 and 1991, Indian director Satyajit Ray made more than thirty feature films, but he’s best remembered in the West for the “Apu trilogy,” which launched his career. Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956), and Apur Sansar (1959) are based on the novels of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhya and follow their hero, Apu, from his impoverished childhood in a small Bengali village through…

There is little, if any, historical accuracy in Amadeus. The portrayal of Mozart (Tom Hulce) as vulgar libertine is certainly based in much historical fact, but as seen through the eyes of Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham), the film’s antihero protagonist and unreliable narrator, even the extent of the genius’ crassness can be called into question….

Taking shelter from a torrential rainstorm in a demon-haunted temple, two men struggle to comprehend the story of a murder. They have witnessed crimes before, but something about this one has left them shell-shocked. One of them laments, “This time, I may finally lose my faith in the human soul.”   What follows in Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon is…

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is a slow film about a man fading quietly from this life in a death rite of bureaucratic and cultural ineptitude. But the carelessness that lends Lazarescu its excruciating pace creates a setting for a criticism of the Romanian health care system that transcends its own context. Mr. Lazarescu has had a headache…

“What is the true meaning of life?” Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski has asked. “Why get up in the morning? Politics doesn’t answer that.” The Decalogue, Kieslowski’s extraordinary, challenging collection of ten one-hour films made for Polish television in the dying days of the Soviet Union, doesn’t answer Kieslowski’s questions either. What it does is pose them…

John Ford’s 1956 Western, The Searchers, ends with the camera framing a doorway, looking out into the gloriously filmed desert. As his remaining friends and family cross over the threshold into the welcoming house, John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards stays outside, watching them. Then he pauses a moment, turns, and walks off into the red dust. There’s…