Kanchenjungha

Set in the beautiful hill station of Darjeeling - a point suspended in time between modern India and the past - Ray's first colour film would have delighted Henry James with its sense of the past and concern for the future. While on holiday with his downtrodden family, whose lives he has unconsciously ruined by benevolently but firmly bending them to his will, an ageing industrial tycoon finds his values shattered by a chance meeting with a young man who refuses to be ruled. As the characters converse on the circling terraces of Observatory Hill in a strictly formalised pattern of walks whose musical structure is underlined by recurring images (the paths crossed and recrossed in different circumstances; a little girl eternally circling on her pony), the themes begin to harmonise contrapuntally and subtly shape all these lives into new configurations. And over it all broods Kanchenjungha, a majestic, inscrutable éminence rose...