Distant Thunder (Ashani Sanket)
“Over five million people in Bengal starved or died in epidemics because of the man-made famine of 1943”: this title appears over the final shot of Distant Thunder, based on a short story by Bibhuti Banerji, author of the novel from which Ray's Apu Trilogy was derived.
“Distant Thunder is set in 1942; Singapore has just fallen. To remote Bengali villagers, it all seems far away, but soon the cost of rice begins to escalate. At first Ganga (Soumitra Chatterjee) and his wife are not affected. He is a Brahmin, schoolteacher-priest-doctor rolled into one. But he too is to suffer from the hoarding, the profiteering, the corrupt system. This raising of consciousness is masterfully counterpointed by the brilliance of color and image which only serves to intensify the contrast between the beauty of the setting and the (understated) horror of the situation.” --New York Film Festival, 1973