The symbolism, both historical and contextual in present political terms should have been understood before the President and the ministers of the Cabinet viewed the film "Aba" at a special screening at Temple trees, as it is reported. The information on our leaders viewing the film and the "approbation" given to it by President Rajapaksa comes from the critique of the film by Sivamohan Sumathy of the Department of English of the Peradeniya University. He sees the box office response- the peoples’ curiosity over the film - having being aroused by this Presidential nod.

Besides, he sees the "glorification of war and soldier as the war hero ….through an endless stream of song and visual representation on television in other places" as pointing to other greater heroes – leaders of the country protected by the divine as the political significance of the film whose hero is protected by the sacrifices made by other ordinary people and whose sacrifices are even not properly narrativized, having a resonance with present day political culture. That is a hero who does not fight but at every turn protected by divine intervention. (See The Island of 17th September 2008).

Hasn’t the act of getting the approbation of the film proved to be a great feat in salesmanship on the part of Jackson Anthony as suggested by some critics? Someone remarked that our top marketing organizations could take a leaf from him in that respect! I am reminded of my late father-in-law, a leading film exhibitor at the time, who arranged a special show at his theatre at Ambalangoda of the film "Patachara" and invited Bhikkhus from temples down south and the Ceylon Theatres group who dispatched journalists from Colombo to cover the occasion. As a result, the film became a great success in the Ceylon Theatre circuit. Do we not see a situation like that here today after forty years?

Contrary to the claim [but misguided belief] that the film glorifies heroism and one who fights for the ‘mother land’, it could to a Tamil viewer,– and to a bemused Tamil viewer at that – as Sumathy rightly says, seem like a call by Prabhakaran and the LTTE to fight for the "homeland", "Eelam." They could see a marginal minority, the Yakkhas, fighting for a "motherland", overthrowing an oppressive rule, as a positive cord in the [Tamil] nationalist mind". Nay, Prabhakaran’s very struggle is being symbolized in Aba though Sumathy refused to go that far because, [as a Tamil] he seemed to be conscious of (Sic)"subversive and radical nature" of the suggestion.

Going by this argument, then the President and ministers could have been equally comfortable watching the film together with Prabhakaran! I want be surprised if Prabhakaran has ordered copies of the film already; or he may have even pirated videos for his rank and file to see!

The critic makes out that the President has contributed to glorifying war. Why did the President put himself in this situation by succumbing to a suggestion [obviously by the producer as a promotion gimmick] to earn this ‘war-mongering’ image to add to the criticism of the LTTE and pro-LTTE media circles and NGOs overseas are projecting against the government, (For example, see my analysis of the Gareth Evans led International Crisis Group Asia Report 146 serialised in The Island recently), while the film projects insurrection and revolt? Better counsel should have prevailed.

You might not believe it. But taking Sumathy’s analogy a little further, it was then not "Aba" but " Prabha" that you saw in the film exhibited to the audience using certain symbolism extracted from the historical Pandukabhaya story to portray Prabhakaran’s claimed struggle to ‘liberate’ his so called "homeland." That is the indisputable hidden message one could derive from the film ‘Aba" now attracting crowds –a call to insurrection and revolt against a conquering regime to protect the " motherland." Isn’t that what E.A.V.Naganathan told Government Agent Neville Jayaweera in 1963 at a DDC Committee meeting the latter convened? He said: "You are here as a ruler and oppressor. We do not want you here….." (The Sunday Island of 12, October, 2008). Hasn’t the whole nation been duped by the producer/Director?

Behind those appeals in the film and Jackson Anthony’s reported interviews (I did not follow the T.V. and other press interviews) lie a propagation of Prabhakaran’s message to his people. Sumathy showed that Jackson in his interviews demonstrated that he was in agreement with some of the greatest scoundrels of the world including Prabhakaran. However, Sumathy avoids discussing Prabhakaran but that analogy is grist for my mill in the examination of the film. I see just the opposite of what Sumathy said. That is a glorification not of the present political culture among the majority led by President Rajapaksa but of the ‘struggle’ waged by Prabhakaran.

Sumathy after having surfaced the issue of the film as a portrayal of a minority fighting against the imposed hegemony of the alien conquerors [from India]. The symbolism resonates Prabhakaran’s claim of ‘liberating’ Tamil ‘homelands’ from the Sinhalese yoke. The Yakkhas and Nagas who according to chronicles of the Sinhalese were the inhabitants before the Vijayan settlers arrived, are now being claimed as pre-Sinhalese Tamils. See K. Indrapala’s recent book "The Evolution of an Ethnic Identity". Indrapala quotes from Sudarshan Seneviratne (Remember my article: "Brown Sahibs") on the Naga identification with Tamils. The Yakkha connection with Tamils, though not so well argued is increasingly being proposed even claiming connection with mythical Ravana!

Jackson Anthony uses the views expressed by Munidasa Cumaratunga and a few others of his school of thought in support of the implication in the film (but more pronounced in his statements) that Aba (Pandukabhaya) was an offspring of the Yakkhas. Cumaratunga was no doubt a great linguist and literary critic but his interpretations of history, especially Yakkhas as the progenitors of the Sinhalese race, (Hela), as Jackson attributes to him, are good for those who believe in fantasies like ten headed demons! He and his followers had even claimed Ravana as the great ancestor, and vilified Rama as the villain who molested and tortured Ravana’s sister in revenge for which Ravana abducted Sita! They also called the Asuras of Indian mythology were the "Assyrians" in history! Even if one ignores these fantasies presented as historical interpretations by this school, we are now in a situation where both Tamils and Sinhalese are claiming relationship with the Yakkhas!

Can an oral tradition which has stood the test of time over two and a half millennia and even recorded as early as two millennia years back, be subverted in a perverse way? As Jackson claims that he has made a careful study of sociology he should know that oral tradition now occupies an important place in reconstructing history. The Six Volume History of Africa produced by UNESCO under the editorship of an international panel of historians and archaeologists should be compulsory reading to anyone who challenges tradition.

Now I like to take up from where Sumathy left without discussing the Prabhakaran analogy. Doesn’t the use of such terminology in the film as "the Sinhala bastards" I saw in the English sub-titles put into the mouths of the Yakkhas resonate Prabhakaran’s racist invectives to "kill" the Sinhalese impliedly delivered to his people through his Hero’s Day and other messages and through the parting benediction dinner given to suicide bombers? The late Mrs Amitrhalingam put it more openly when she proclaimed at election meetings in Trincomalee that skins of the Sinhalese would be used to make slippers for Tamils! (Sansoni Commission Report).

So when Sumathy quoted what Jackson Anthony said in a television interview, the critic remarking that he did not understand what this’ motherland concept’ was, as he was brought up amidst Tamil nationalism, he (the critic) was avoiding what was obvious. He should have been one of the first to realize what the symbolism in the film was –a call to insurrection and revolt, as he (Sumathy) himself identified. But one may not agree to whom the film’s call is. The Sinhalese viewers could interpret it in their own way and Tamil viewers in their own way with the Yakkhas as their progenitor.

I suggest that the call in the film is for Tamil nationalism, though the Sinhalese who have been duped are filling the box office crowd mistakenly thinking that "Aba" is their "Baba"! I am not making any suggestions about Jackson’s own background, that is whether he too, like Sumathy is a product of any kind of nationalism. From his own public statements he wants to de-construct Sinhalese historical tradition for his own reason. More on it later.

It has been suggested that a patriotic film had to work at gaining the consent of the viewer towards its ideological message, centering a hero who is convincing and meaningful. The modern hero has to win the consent of the public at the level of patriotism or at the level of revolution / revolt.[Sumathy]. (I remember seeing such a film in China in the story of Yuan shi-kai who was the first Chinese revolutionary). A hero cannot be taken for granted, even one provided tailor–made by ‘history’ as Sumathy says. The tragic and heroic have to be invented to gain consent. Sumathy sees such qualities in Jesus films and Roman films but Aba, albeit supposedly working at those two levels espousing patriotism and heroism, remains "static, un-dynamic in its narrative development". One can agree with that.

However, the critic observed that the film failed to create compelling aesthetics for ‘patriotism’ which he summed up as the declared objective of the producer - not that he accepts patriotism as he recalls Dr. Johnson who called patriotism the last refuge of the scoundrel - but saw the film’s very failure in this direction was what was driving its success within the current moment of politics. He went further in introducing the political analysis saying the film’s failure aesthetically and its "purported"success politically, as I remarked earlier, "underscored the growing trend of totalitarianism and fascism in the south". [At that point, a worse situation found in the Vanni did not occur to him though he later denounced Prabhakaran.).

He also asked why the film failed to evoke the sense of pathos at suffering and victimization [of the Yakkas] while evoking the grandeur of the kingdom evoking awe at the ruling Sinhala dynasty; and the awesomeness of the spirit of resistance created through spectacular invocation of myth and supernatural. True as it is, this seems to be a contradiction in the critics own analysis.

Anyone could see that the portrayal of young Aba in the film is "weak and the rest pedestrian" as the critics say, except in the case of Habara. This weakness is not in the individual’s understanding of each of their characters and portrayals but as Sumathy observed, due "to the result of weakness, a looseness, a glossary and uninvolved treatment of the subject that leaves one really cold and untouched by any of the phenomenal happenings.", One could agree with the view that they are too phenomenal to make sense to a modern viewer.

As a number of critics observed, what does Aba, the young man with his ribs almost bare (In Sinhala ‘iranam tattuvva paedichcha lamayek)’ is seen swimming in water pools (like in some of the old Hoolywood mid-night films shown at the Majestic Theatre where Esther Williams’ swimming gimmicks) took the central space, dancing with village children, practising sword fights, and wrestling with other youth, emerging always the victor (hero) like the ‘Kolla’ in old Bolliwood’s (but there was no accompanying ‘Kella’) street- level hero, but never displaying the characteristics of a rising national hero.

That is left to the viewers to imagine applying their knowledge of the traditional story which the producer/ Director has decided to abandon for the central part.

That lack of heroic character also applies to the response of the child who comes to know who his real mother is. A hero could not be found soliloquizing and scribbling on rock walls [or throwing stones aimlessly in anger]. He would be expected, even from present day experience, to protest surely and remonstrate more heroically. That is what would be expected just not from a hero’s role, but even from a village urchin. We are reminded of many men in our own midst who left their wards with fifty cents in hand to become great men later!

In sum, on the whole then, Aba’s qualities as an emerging national hero are not brought out in the film. They are found in the traditional story where he gathers Yakkha support and later rewards them fittingly to the extent of retaining the female Yakkha who rendered service in the form of a mare in the royal palace. If any producer wanted to deviate from the traditional story that sort of incidence provided ample space even for the imagination to run riot even to the extent of introducing a side romance. After all, didn‘t Vijaya, the leader of the original origin story, wed the Yakkha princess Kuveni (Ka-vanna)? So finally, in the film, heroism is left to the imagination of the viewer who remembers the Mahavamsa story but which the film tries to discard elsewhere.

"Emotion of the Pious"

Even the compiler of the 6th century chronicle of the Sinhalese strived to create what he called ‘pahan sanvegaya’ (emotion of the pious) through his narrative which was read out to the devotees. The ‘Pahan sanvegaya’ for the Mahavamsa audiences of the time was a limited one. In the lead to the Pandukabhaya story one sees how the Buddha’s dynasty is made to play a role in the future introduction of Buddhism through a scion of Bahaddakaccana who descended from Buddha’s family and arrived in the island to become the consort of Panduvasudeva. The latter’s lineage is not as conspicuous as that of Bhaddakaccana. (That applies to Vijaya too). So it is the ‘noble’ lineage of the Buddha that the Mahavamsa tries to introduce into the minds of the readers (listeners). On listening to the narrator of Mahavamsa one could hear the audience erupting into an emotion uttering "Sadhu, Sadhu!" On the contrary, it is to the Vijaya from Kalinga that the rulers of the late Anuradhapura and Polonnaruva periods traced their origins as seen from their inscriptions. Panduvasudeva or Pandukabhaya who commenced the new dynasty pass into oblivion. Does this mean that the chroniclers failed in their attempt to establish Pandukabhaya as the progenitor of a new dynasty linked to Buddha and the older tradition connected with Vijaya prevailed? Has the producer/director now given the final blow to the linking of the Buddha’s clan which should be clear to any close reader of the chronicler tradition, with his film by suggesting that Aba carried [not the Buddha clan seed derived from the maternal side through Baddhakaccana] but Yakkha seed?

This is an aspect that those who see Christainisation in the film, the Christ as the hero, from the scene of the two Yakkha guards being taken to the execution place with the cross bars on their shoulders as Jesus carried the Cross, to women with covered heads resembling modern day Christian nuns wailing throwing their hands in the air, through the resurrection of the two Yakkha chiefs to one of them attaining divinity, and like Christ, rising from the Cross to provide, in this case, protection to Aba, his seed through communion with him who appears Christ-like in the air, and to the Brahamin who runs what looks like a modern day International School where children wearing shorts are always seen playing with the basket ball, being characterized like the Christ, should take note of. In the scenarios of killing the children, the Roman Catholic in the producer could be in his home ground. It is also part of the Jesus story. Whether he received inspiration for Christanisation of the film from his own religious background or similarities like in the massacre of children which is common to both Jesus and Pandukabhaya stories, influenced him are details which should be gone into.

So, in the film, it is not only his own "seed" that the Yakkha chief is seen protecting, like the she-crocodile hovering round her nest of eggs, but far more importantly, it is the connection with the Buddha’s clan, the seed coming from Baddhakaccana’s brother’s son, Dighgamini, that is being denied through the introduction of the idea of the "Yakkha seed." Doesn’t one see here the attempt to deconstruct the claim of the Sinhalese dynasty with the Buddha clan? The claim that a future scion of the family would establish (read receive) Buddhism in the Island? Isn’t the agenda of the film quite clear? How could one subscribe to the film as one defending the heroism of a man born to protect the ‘motherland’?

Shouldn’t Unmadacitra, as the mother of Pandukabhaya (Aba in the film) been made to play a more central role in the film even in its concocted version? A grand occasion was present to bring about ‘pahan sanvegaya’ by portraying the emotional stress to which she was subjected to as a result of the royal soothsayers predicting that she would give birth to a son who would kill the uncles and whose life was in danger as a result. The anguish of the princess should have been heightened by the prospects as prophesied that the child would rise to be a great ruler as the historical tradition put it. Neither does Mahavamsa make much of an issue to portray Unmadachitra’s emotional discomfort but the traditional story contained enough pathos to excite my seven year-old grandson whose preference always is for the Pandukabhaya story, to empathise with both the mother and son.

Then the rather low priority given to the portrayal of the character of Unmadachitra is conspicuous because the traditional story implies and the film supposedly tries to make out, that she was the royal mother with whom, according to Mahavamsa tradition, the new Sinhalese dynasty would originate with links to Buddha’s clan and to which a future ruler who would receive Buddhism would be born. It seemed to me that the Queen mother, (Bhaddakaccana) whose role was played by Malini Fonseka was more dominant than that of her daughter, Unmadachitra. Though the queen mother’s role was not a major one, Malini Fonseka’s personality and acting, perhaps, made that difference. So, it was Baddhakaccana who receives relatively, greater importance in the film than the royal mother, while Unmadachitra becomes a little more than a showpiece.

Not even her captivating looks which sent men mad [in love] which is said to have earned her the sobriquet "Unmada" gets projected sufficiently. But could one trust the traditional explanation that she received the sobriquet because she sent others mad by her bewitching beauty? My own inclination based on a close reading of Mahavamsa in the original Pali is a different one: that it was because of the mental situation caused by the soothsayers telling the Court that a son born to her would kill the uncles. Whether or not that was the real reason for the sobriquet ‘Unmada’, Chitra’s state of mind on this account as well as her later mental distress over the child being separated for long years and the agony over the difficult life he may be enduring in the remote village has received only cosmetic treatment in the film.

Instead of following the lead of the mental state of Unmadachitra, isn’t it on the little opening in the traditional story, namely, that she sent people mad by her beauty that the producer seems to have taken license and liberty to suggest that Aba carries the seed of the Yakkhas. It is both through his interviews and through the film that the producer has unethically and un-aesthetically manipulated the original story by giving prominence to the Yakkha Chtraraja and making the story of prince Dighagamini, the son of one of Baddhakaccana’s brothers, who in the tradition is the father of the child, look like a virtual fabrication in the royal court, a cover-up story of a possible serious indiscretion on the part of Unmadachitra such as inviting a Yakkha guard to her bed chamber to be bestowed with amorous favours. Jackson quotes only secondary sources –the fantasies of Munidasa Cumaratunga as I commented earlier, which are not taken seriously as history. How could the fact that the Yakkhas were treated well by Pandukabhaya be perverted to give him a Yakkha parentage? Any serious student of history will see in Pandukabhaya’s treatment of Yakkhas a war strategy against the powerful uncles. That is exactly what happened as the Mahavamsa tells. The chronicle was more charitable to the Yakkhas than the film. It finds a place within the royal palace to the Yakkhini who helped the prince in war taking the form of a mare; and the two chiefs are given equal prominence on festive days. But in the film, except for Chitraraja, the roles of other Yakkhas is made servile. A serious contradiction –" the result of weakness, a looseness, a glossary and un-involved treatment of the subject " as Sumathy remarked.

On the contrary, what does one see? A horrible scene of physical suffering that Unmadachitra goes through at child birth in the traditional lying-in- room which is given full and unnecessary exposure; a scene reconstructed from some primitive tribal situation somewhere as I saw once in the French television captured by an amateur in the wilds of Indonesia - a witch-doctor performing hoodoo and opening up a pregnant woman’s belly to reach the child simply with his hands without surgical instruments – a virtual hand-operated cesarean! How can such a situation be expected to take place in a royal court which, as Sumathy says, has all the paraphernalia of "epic grandeur" of an [Indian origined] royal court with a hegemonic call over the [Yakkha] inhabitants? Was that introduced with a view to drawing the box office or with a view to earning an Oscar at a foreign film festival? If so, the former was a total failure, revolting as it was. Even a Sri Lankan villager knows how clean the environment is made at child birth even in a poor home and the elderly women who traditionally opted to deliver a child before the later midwives were introduced, were very clean persons. Whether or not foreign audiences would be impressed or not is another thing. Primitive sensation is still attractive to the West.

What happened then to Dighgamini of the original story whose minimum presence is very conspicuous in the film? Deviation has to follow the historical trend and not to destroy it if one claims any reconstruction of history through the film. The way Dighagamini is brought into the scene in the Mahavamsa is very interesting. Unmadachitra is shown to have fallen in love with a son of one of Baddhakaccana’s brothers. These brothers of Bhaddacacchana, after visiting the king and their sister are said to have ‘lamented’ with her (MV.Ch.IX: 7). In an interesting foot-note, Geiger says, the lament was probably over the fate that had befallen Unmadacitra. If Geiger’s assertion is correct, -he had an intuition – what was this fate? It shows the princess was already distraught in mind even before she had physical contact with a man. What could it be at that distant point of time, except a mental trauma caused by the prophesy of the court astrologers? The etymological derivation of ‘Unmada’ leaves much to be desired and is not an unusual one.

Has the producer then taken a leaf from a not so unfamiliar situation found even today in high societies where a young girl who is not exposed to socializing with men may cohabit with a household employee and the sort, exemplified the in D.H.Lawrence’s novel, ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ and where a willing (often ignorant) man is found to bear someone else’s burden? If I am right, did the producer of the film, then try to suggest a Yakkha parentage to Aba, (to be distinguished from Pandukabhaya) as a counter to the Mahavamsa with an ulterior motive, namely, to deny the bloodline that the Mahavamsa ascribes to the prince from Buddha’s clan?

Isn’t that the reason why the film repeatedly says "he (Aba) carries "Yakkha seed." On the contrary, in the film, it is Chitraraja, the Yakkha guard who dominates the scene, first as the guard of the young prince Dighagamini, before he was killed and later as his ‘divine’ protector who communicates with the prince. Isn’t the suggestion throughout the film that this Yakkha chief was the real father of Aba? Why should a deviation from the text resorting to such perversity when there was enough space otherwise to give flesh and blood to the plot, e.g. Pandukabhaya retaining in the palace, the Yakkhin who served him in war in the form of a mare?

In any case, Dighagamini, the father imposed by Mahavamsa moves to the background in the film, a ‘ponniah’ if one may use that present day derogative term, and Chitrararaja assumes the role of the [father and] protector of the child while the former was living and after his death communes with the child. Hence the ‘Yakkaha blood’ which the film keeps on ascribing to Aba. The Yakkha servant Habara carries the message of the seed that Aba carries to Brahamin Pandula. The producer had to raise Chitraraja to state of divinity for that purpose of communion. A Roman Catholic producer/director could not perceive such a communion with a re-born spirit in the [lower] form of a Yakkha. Naturally, the Christian ideas of resurrection and communion enters the film in a big way even five centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ which is the chronological setting for the film. What took place in Bethlehem could then be a second coming of the Christ!

Jackson cannot argue that he took the cue from Mahavamsa in leaving out giving prominence to Dighgamini. (See Daily News Features page of 15, October,2008). Can he then explain why he gave so much prominence to the Yakkha servant of Dighgamini building him up to a state of divinity which is not found in Mahavamsa. I shall leave other contradictions –his retractions in the face of building opposition to his misleading film – which have been presented by two "super intellectuals" named Sachira Mahendra and Ruwini Jayawardene, for another occasion. It is tragic that they have not been able to follow what was said at the seminar on 13th October, though they have commented in English!

"International School"

That Jackson’s claim that he made a close study of the sociological situation of the historical time in producing the film, as he did in his interviews, becomes sheer bunkum when one sees the role of the Pandula Brahamin which has been over developed to a level of absurdity. My immediate reaction was to ask if we were watching an Indian film. The Christian imprint introduced there is one thing; the presentation does not fit into a 5th century B.C. situation in a remote Sri Lankan village inhabited by Yakkha shepards. The scenario out-passes even the situation at the institution run by Disapamokkacari in ancient Takkshila. One has only to take a look at some of the Gandhara sculptures to see how the artists around the 1st century B.C. conceived of the Brahamin. The scene of Buddha visiting the Brahamin shows him living in a small ’kuti’ just enough for him to crouch in. Those interested may look up Sir John Marshall’s The Buddhist Art of Gandhara, plate 42. So much for the producer’s claim of having done a sociological survey.

Does the film portray the Yakkhas in proper light despite all the claims that the film is on the side of the oppressed minority? No. Only Chitraraja, the guard is taken out to be treated more than respectfully and even built up to divine state. The Mahavamsa is more charitable to the Yakkhas in the Pandukabhaya story. The Yakkhas are shown as a servile people throughout the film. This is a great contradiction between the objective and the reality displayed in the film.

The conclusion is Aba is not the story of Pandukabhaya of history. It is an imaginary work using historic symbols. I can see a parallel between this film and that of "Siddharta" based on Hermann Hess’s book which was hailed as a great success. That too used Buddhist symbols and denigrated that very name which is so sanctimonious to the Buddhists. Siddharta was portrayed in the book/film as a pleasure seeking man who enjoyed sexual pleasures with the former courtesan Ambapali. That was quite opposite of the story of Siddhartha in Buddhist lore. Both ‘Siiddharta’ and ‘Aba’ are perverse work presented in the name of art! They seem to follow an agenda like rubber slippers with Buddha symbols produced by a Western company.

The claim that the film evokes patriotism and defends motherland is absurd. Both these are not for the historic land but for others –the minorities. That claim is in the narrative which has been blended with the film and ex-film interviews given by the producer. That claim seems to be an invitation to insurrection and revolt.