Balu Mahendra to the script". As a film-maker, he claimed himself as belonging to the realistic way of story-telling devised by Satyajit Ray and Vittorio De Sica. Mahendra was drawn towards realistic cinema after watching Ray's "Pather Panchali" (1955). He is credited as being one among the earliest filmmakers to bring "naturalism" in Tamil cinema in the 1970s. He usually photographed, scripted and edited all his films. His films were characterised by strong "visual appeal" and minimal number of characters. A majority of his films centre on the complexity of human relationships and are known to portray women as strong characters. Although
Pather Panchali and their fate, as signifying a philosophical core: that both the young and the old die. Seton writes of the film's "lyrical" qualities, noting especially the imagery immediately before the onset of monsoon. Robinson writes about a peculiar quality of "lyrical happiness" in the film, and states that "Pather Panchali" is "about unsophisticated people shot through with great sophistication, and without a trace of condescension or inflated sentiment". Darius Cooper discusses the use of different "rasa" in the film, observing Apu's repeated "epiphany of wonder", brought about not only by what the boy sees around him, but also when he