Pather Panchali

My friend Dustin summed up this film pretty well - it's powerful but devastating, one misery after another but so well made that you feel genuinely present, totally absorbed in the story. There's something about the way it's shot, I think, and the sparse, unaffected story telling style, that makes it seem sort of simple and everyday, despite the fact that for the most part, the everyday isn't exactly a barrel of laughs.