Politician LK Advani, as is quite well known, used to be a film critic. I once heard him describe his first experience of watching Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali that stays in memory. Halting at each word, he simply said, "Mera maatha aisa thanka (my mind frickin' boggled at the sight)!"

I guess he was reacting to the sense of recognition, and debilitating realism of rural India/Bengal — from the boy Apu, old lady Indir Takrun, to the pastoral landscape — that was hitherto unseen, on screen, for most people in the world.