Prasanna Vithanage does not fall short: in fact, the film’s so well done, that you thank the lucky stars of the country that there are those who still can do a good film.

So, more to the point, should it have been banned? Not at all. It’s a representation of facts, but it is always, one remembers, a creative work. It is also a work of art that brings to ridicule the genre of films with the short-skirted heroine and heroes in unbuttoned shirts running around trees (or now the monstrous looking motorbikes) and which are marked with violence. Especially when their short previews are shown for what seems like forever before a film of the standard of Purahanda Kaluwara.

Will it demoralise the forces? But which would affect the morale of the forces more: the frequent propaganda at the cost of millions by citizens of this country calling for a stop to the war (the SriLankFirst campaign and the notorious Thavalama) or an artistic and sympathetic portrayal of the lives of almost every family in this country with a member in the armed forces? (Leaving aside of course those officials who even reportedly ‘serve’ on the board of directors of arms companies).

The film examines closely a form of corruption in the war at its lowest level. But the issue of obtaining compensation, for a man who it is suspected just maybe still alive, only but hints at corruption. What if the film had described the mass scale corruption in the procurement of arms and supplies to the forces where government officials shamelessly make their big bucks? The film shows the manner in which the government functionary at village level, the Grama Sevaka, also seeks to benefit from the legitimate military response of the State to terrorism. It could be put in the form of comments by some fellow ‘prekshakaya’s, as, e.g.: The following exchange occurred as I left the Regal. In free translation it went like this: ‘Do you think this film will demoralise the army?’ ‘Why do you ask?’ ‘That’s what the government said when they banned it.’ ‘It will demoralise the arms-purchasing people in the government. They are the people who have been demoralising the soldiers by giving them ‘baala ayudha’ [poor quality weapons].’ ‘But why was the GS trying to make money?’ ‘Because he will say, "When there’s this big, broad river of ‘jaraava’ flowing by, what is wrong if I dip my fingers in it?"’

When they find themselves strapped for cash, Vanni Appuhamy’s family does not go robbing others. They fall back on the only assets the villager has: land and labour, and try to turn them into cash: mortgaging their land, baking mud bricks, seeking employment in a garment sweat-shop in ‘the city’.

The film is a sensitive portrait of people in our ‘purana-gam’ in the North Central Province and of the landscape which governs their lives. The camera is faithful to the pace of the life both in such seamless villages and in the city.

Films usually have a lot of things that don’t happen in real life. They have to. Otherwise, they may often not have a story, or even be films. It is usually the extra-ordinary that is portrayed in films, not the ordinariness of everyday life that the likes of Chekhov or Stanislavsky promoted in theatre. In Purahanda Kaluwara, there’s little or nothing that a person could point at and say: that’s bizarre. The only unusual thing that gives the twist and the end to the story is the almost single-handed (he had already struck the coffin when the villagers and family came) exhumation of a son’s body by the father.

That act by the blind Wannihamy (Joe Abeywickrama) is the only thing in the film, that is at least a little out of the ordinary. Yet that again is credible because of the unusual character of the old man. The story centres around him, and the actor, needless to say, is excellent. It starts with an early morning trip by Wannihamy to a tank, checking the ground in front of him with his stick. It hits the cracked bottom of what was once under water. The tank had receded due to a prolonged drought that prevented the villagers from cultivating. It appears to a be a normal day, but is marked by the arrival of a hearse in a vehicle that is shown travelling in the deserted roads long before Wannihamy’s trip to the water.

It was a full moon day. The events that follow are a portrayal of ordinary village life. The only incident that marks their days afterwards is the old man’s insistence on not putting his thumb print on the compensation papers. The daughters, and especially the Grama Sevaka who wants his loaned money, urge him to obtain the compensation. He’s adamant: to him his son is not dead, so therefore he cannot take the money. His son had written a letter which had arrived after his funeral saying he would come back and attend to completing the new house they were building and his younger sister’s marriage. And after all, Wannihamy tells his daughter: I am blind, but you could have seen; remember they refused to open the coffin so that we could see him? The old man had third eye vision: he could see beyond them.

It is a film that has its own individual story of a poor family. That it will touch the real lives of the audience to the extent of changing their views on the current terrorist war in Sri Lanka is far-fetched. Perhaps a soldier may walk away from the film feeling disconcerted about the possible urge to claim for compensation by his family on the event of his death, but would he not already be fully conscious of that by now, and would he not, in fact be expecting that money to come to those he leaves behind? Of course, it maybe embarrassing to those who had received compensation not knowing what was inside the sealed coffins. Yet the end of the film does not render the officer any less dead. And perhaps the film would affect the clamour for compensation. Whatever it does, it would also embarrass the government through its portrayal of the GS: and then perhaps we see why the film was banned.

At the end of the story, you understand that the Grama Sevaka knew of the possible fraud all along, because he knows even without seeing or being told. He only wanted to get his money back. Also, the fraud is but perhaps a necessity that a government at some point cannot avoid, if it does happen. But then one wonders whether it wouldn’t be more profitable for the government to declare the person missing. That way, it wouldn’t have to compensate, let alone bother with a trip to a remote village. But that would be too vague for a reader who hasn’t seen the film and give away too much of the film in this review.

Such questions may arise at the end of the film. Nevertheless, it is a sensitive and quietly done portrayal, an insight into the lives of so many hundreds of thousands in this country. It is not an attack against a military solution, but of the corruption that accompanies the war in Sri Lanka. After viewing Purahanda Kaluwara, the public would not be so ignoramus as to conclude that the war effort should be dropped and as a consequent have the north and east handed over to the LTTE. Give us a break! And target the real unpatriots.