By Vijaya Jayasuriya
Moon is a sight everyone likes for its pure, pleasant and soothing light. All these positive qualities assume rich symbolic value in Prasanna Vithanage’s ‘Purahanda Kaluwara’ as this light, as it is repeatedly presented in the film, gets incessantly dimmed by dark wisps of clouds which is the antithesis of all good values of life the source of all human suffering on this tumultuous planet of ours today. This elementary truth is projected into macro proportions, albeit garbed in down-to-earth rustic simplicity, encompassing a whole welter of destructive activity pursued by humanity in the name of our biggest human problem today — the phenomenon of war. To bring into sharp focus the struggle the ordinary humans put up to come to terms with the soul-demeaning guile involved in the whole process is Vithanage’s task in this captivating cinematic poem.

His choice of this eminently relevant theme is justification enough for Vithanage to gain international recognition as one of the best film-makers of our times, yet a whole spectrum of cinematic distinctions make it a work of unique artistic creativity that help the said focus to be brought out beautifully and unobtrusively rendering our minds deeply involved in the intellectual dialogue that the film-maker invites us to share with him. To deal with the cinematic quality of the film is not my main concern in this article, but rather the film’s high relevance to our immediate political reality in a deeper sense, yet a few highly rewarding points deserve brief mention: The stark economy of dialogue doing justice to the medium (eg. we do not hear nor do we get a close-up of how the hearse-driver asks the homeguard the way to Bandara’s house); Profusely used rich symbolism to convey meaning (eg. The vulture — or is it the eagle — hovering in the sky above the dead body being taken —); the severe brevity of scenes displaying excellent editing (eg. We are not told takes about how and why Some—the rugged would-be son-in-law — finds brick-making a profitless drudgery, nor Vannihamy is prompted by the script to indulge in harangues responding to coaxing done by various characters to get him to comply). The truly brilliant portrayal of characters by the maestro Joe Abeywickrama, the very promising Linton Semage and Mahendra Perera stand out as the most notable factor that contributes to the success of the film while, to be fair by the numerous new faces as well, the rest of the cast perform their parts adequately convincingly. This much suffices regarding the technical aspect of the work that provides the means of projecting the philosophy of the film - my focus in the present article.

‘Purahanda’ is the story of a man who refuses to accept the fact that his only son dies in the ethnic war the whole country is engulfed in — (I should emphasize the ‘whole country’ here because, though only part of the country is actually involved in the act of war, no one living in the rest of the island is spared the agony of it unless they are morons impervious to human suffering.) The way this monolithic human specimen resists the forces that keep bulldozing him towards a meek acceptance of the reality — rather the garbled reality - attempts to give us a lesson about how far we as the modernized homosapians have meandered away from what should have been our real role in the face of this tragic and miserable status quo.

This status quo involves the inevitable conditions on which we all have fashioned our lives: That the conflicts between two factions in the same country should come to warring terms with each other over their right to part of that same territory; that any endlessly protracted process of negotiations shall go on indefinitely without ever coming to a settlement; that people should die in this war is inevitable; that we have to in mute resignation accept a sealed coffin which one day or other would arrive at our doorsteps and assume without protest that it is our family member who is inside; that we should without being squeamish try to get the meagre compensation as it were and at least try to pay back our debts incurred in attempting to put up a little house for the family etc. etc. etc. This list could go on and on depending on the naivety of the social class involved — among school-goers it would be for example that you may not give a damn about education because there is a sure-fire way to success in life by taking to arms — both by joining the forces and then, if that income doesn’t give you the El dorado anticipated, becoming a ‘deserter’ (what an euphemism!) cum a desparado!

The only misfit, the eccentric who is not ready to accept this theory is Sri Lanka’s Vannihamy, who also believes that there is little reason for a letter from the godforsaken North-East region of this land to take more than two days to come to him and that therefore it is quite absurd that a dead body should come home before a letter written by the dead man arrives! What Vannihamy believes in is nature which Shakespeare in most of his plays compares with ‘light’ as against ‘dark’ representing evil. (compare with the title ‘purahanda Kaluwara’).

‘Dark night strangles the travelling lamp’

(Macbeth: scene II.4)

The natural forces of the world being a recurrent theme in Shakespeare, he refers to a ‘towering’ falcon being killed by ‘a mousing owl’ etc. etc. as acts of flouting nature, the likes of which often happens amidst humans. It is this nature that Vannihamy stands by and endeavours to uphold in his stance of not accepting the conditions all others around him embrace without hesitation. His longest statement in the film which is noted for space dialogues is one encompassing this truism:

‘We may have our (financial) difficulties, but no one in our ancestry has ever lived by guile. It is my blood that runs in Bandara’s body. Getting compensation was not his idea in going to war, he wanted to build his house...’

A whole gamut of deceptive gimmicks involved in the war situation has been brought into play in ‘Purahanda’ in order to portray how our protagonist Vannihamy manages to withstand them singlehanded. Unmoved by even the compensation offer, which is in itself part of degradation of the value of human life, it takes him just the single humanitarian gesture by Bandara’s friends to stop short and take a serious look at what the world around him says about his son. The equal of this leads to the debunking of the greatest hoax that is thrust down the throats of the parents of soldiers whose bodies are blown to smithereens in landmines. (It may be this phenomenon of bodiless funerals which is an insult to humanity that prompted somebody to launch an uproar against landmines.) The big revelation made possible by the stubborn resistance put up by this lonely man brings the whole village to reason and be dumb in disbelief of what they had been duped so long to live very smugly with. The coffin sans a dead body is by the way a grotesque symbol of the futility of war — a wa’ waged with a lot of fanfare like the ornamental casket and yet is devoid of any substance — no relevance to human welfare.

It is this conglomeration of acts against nature that keep on bamboozling the masses that undoubtedly prompted the last government to ban ‘Purahanda’ the stalwarts of that crowd being possible minions of the game. This happens to be the existing order of the world, the big powers invariably involved in it while hiding inside a sanctimonious garb often described by platitudes such as ‘people’s government’, ‘democratic principles’ etc. etc. The game goes on employing more and more ingenious ploys to make it appear as acceptable as possible.

"Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it"

(Shakespeare)

Can we hope to be rid of the evil with the change of government? The final scene in ‘Purahanda’ is both symbolic and prophetic at the same time; Almost akin to that on Monalisa’s face the close-up look of Vannihamy’s face has a cryptic smile while watching a group of joyful boys are playing in the murky water of the lake with a brooding darkness hanging above them. What could be the message Vithanage wants us to get from these closing images? To my mind it is one of doleful ambivalence — the playful boys could symbolize a happy future for the new generation with the enlightenment that has just dawned or else it can well be childish complacency with little thought about impending disaster. The smile on "Atha’s" face can depict both these antitheses.

The key word used by the new premier Ranil Wickremesinghe to describe the status quo ante was quite apt: ‘Visanvadi’ governance meaning the deceitful rule of the last government (‘visanvadi’ — deceitful according to Ven. Velivitiya Soratha’s ‘Sri Sumangala Dictionary’: p. 963)

Can our motherland get away from this rotten political culture and start the most vital need of the hour — resurrecting the nation? The ongoing war assiduously promoted by arms producers and their local cohorts may be resolved by peaceful negotiation aiming at some degree of devolution of power. There can be little cause for secessionism if governments do justice to the masses without ethnic differences. Even if we managed to resolve this major problem for good, there would still remain a sizable part of this ‘Visanvadi’ syndrome — corruption that has eaten into our entire body politic resulting in human suffering leading to most probably yet another faction showing secessionist proclivities. It therefore behaves the new government to ensure putting paid to the ‘Visanvadi’ tendencies that at any quarter can raise its ugly head.

It is here that the much-vaunted concepts of transparency, accountability and productivity come relevant. Like Piyasena in Gunadasa Amarasekara’s novel ‘Depa Noladdo’ who gets ahead in the struggle of life in spite of his physical handicap, Vannihamy succeeds in seeing through the world despite his total blindness, while all others around him prove to be mere nincompoops blindly accepting the organised skulduggery designed just for that purpose. This is Vithanage’s challenge to the world — come to grips with the reality shedding that wretched lotus-eater attitude!

It is on these lines that ‘Purahanda’ transcends the parameters of just the ethnic war and proves its relevance to all other human activity that is at the moment in total disarray in our midst. It cries out from its vantage point for the masses to be vigilant to develop their capacity to see through hazy horizons mostly artificially put up by vested interests.