Days and Nights in the Forest
Director: Satyajit Ray
Year Released: 1970
Rating: 1.5
Four "sophisticated" buddies from Calcutta - Shekhar (Rabi Ghosh), Hari (Samit Bhanja), Ashim (Soumitra Chatterjee) and Sanjoy (Subhendu Chatterjee) - take a road trip to "the countryside" where they bribe the gatekeeper to let them in (they didn't make a reservation), drink to excess, mock those "beneath" them and play a game with a few of the females hanging around that involves naming famous people. This feature by Ray appears to be universally acclaimed which is baffling to me, since on the surface it just seems like a slight statement about class warfare (though there are cultural nuances I'm probably failing to detect) and the leads are repellent ... and then in the last act Ray fumbles around to add a "romantic" element to it, with these bozos trying to actually "emotionally connect" with the ladies. Wikipedia has it listed as an "adventure drama film" which is, in my opinion, quite misleading: the same could be said if you recorded me going to my back yard, starting up my lawnmower and accidentally running over a snake ... which is more compelling than anything else here.