Rating: 8.7 / 10

"The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit."

— Martin Luther King Jr.

Satyajit Ray shows in 12 minutes of cinema without dialogues how impressionable the mind of a child can be, how the rich kid will have all the means to get one up over the poor kid but will always be insecure of the liberty the poor kid enjoys. It is this sense of liberty that would make the poor kid stand back up after a heavy loss. Robots will fall, the tune of the flute will be heard again. Imagine the rich kid to be the USA and the poor kid to be Vietnam. 12 minutes of Ray's cinema will tell you why America lost the war.

A bored young lad is wandering about his palatial home where has everything he is likely to need to eat, drink and play with. Then from his window he espies another boy outside playing on his makeshift flute. He then proceeds to get his more sophisticated instrument and out-blows him. His new pal goes and gets a drum - but the wealthier lad has a wind up monkey that can play two - at the same time. Not to be outdone, the poorer one returns wearing a menacing mask and wielding a bow and arrow. In response? Well another mask and a machine gun! Silence breaks out and the boys go their separate ways only for a kite to appear outside the barred windows of the house. It's freely darting about in the wind like a fish in a river but it's also fair game for a slingshot, or maybe even an air rifle? Now one boy's joy is another's sadness, one is smug the other despondent. Tenaciously, the flautist returns... This is quite a potent depiction of having things of value that are not really of value versus having nothing but having so much more. The effort from the young Ravi Kiran Karla as the boy who has everything is quite effective at engendering from the audience a sense that he's a spoilt and unlikeable kid whilst the expressions on the face of his poverty stricken counterpart illicit sympathy as Satyajit Ray offers us a subtle commentary on the haves and have nots. Though which has the most?