Renoir's river runs deep

Out of all the films in my current Jean Renoir Criterion Channel retrospective, The River was the one I was the most excited to cross off the list as it’s one of Scorsese’s favourite films and I’d heard a lot about it’s beautiful technicolor and eye-candy cinematography. What I wasn’t expecting however was a rich story with so much substance underneath the surface, that takes a lot of its philosophy, ideas and themes from Indian and Eastern culture.

Scorsese said his viewing of The River was a very formative and impressionable experience for him as he saw it at a young age, with the film centered on a place and culture extremely foreign to him compared to the mean streets of New York he grew up in, and you can see the influence that this would have had on his interest to make films like Kundun and Silence.

Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy was my first exposure in film to this side of the world, but this gives a deeper context to just why this culture exists and remains so. This film has some of the best cinematography, use of color and narration in any film I’ve ever seen and it’s genuinely given me such a deeper teaching, understanding and respect for this culture.