|
|
 |
 |
 |
| Wednesday, 17 November 2004 |
 |
|
 |
Artscope | |
| News Business Features Editorial Security Politics World Letters Sports Obituaries
|
Film review Mille Soya: refreshing cinematic effort by E. M. G. Edirisinghe Sihina Deshayen (1996) which literally means 'From the Dreamland' was Boodee Keerthisena's cinematic debut. It sent down a few ripples among the viewers as a radical movie. The Buddha said that man either worries over the past or dreams about the future. Boodee, the young enterprising innovative film-director, once again had come out with dreams of straying youth keeping in line with reality of life. Its touch on the essence of mental and environmental unrest among the youth is captured in its raw uncensored spirit. Mile Soya (Bourgiomo Italia) takes his cinema to another sphere beyond what he tapped in his first creation. It is an extension of the same wave he had earlier stepped on. However, Mille Soya is more adventurous, realistic and dramatic in conception and execution. It is an objective treatment of how some try to realise their dreams nurtured individually and shared together. It is a journey of the youth from the original dreamland to land of dreams actual experiences in search of greener pastures. Boodee does not fall into feature an imaginary story-line where the characters are made to conduct themselves to fit into director's imagination. Instead, he picked up characters alive from real social life with their background too, absorbed into the script. Ever increasing desire of the frustrated youth to migrate to Italy is consuming them socially, mentally and financially. Fantasy and reality Fantasy intermingles with reality. Pradeep is in love with Princey, but their journey in love is often fanciful. He returns home only to legally migrate into Italy. The film-maker adducing intellectual growth and social-political education to the misdirected and misunderstood youth, tells that the only way to success and happiness abroad is the legal entry to that country.
How Pradeep was relaxed, elated and happy when he was offered a formal opportunity to go to Italy, displays the confidence one gets when one does the right thing. Finally, dream is converted into reality. The unusual manner of picking characters to be harnessed for dramatic presentation of the film to carry its elusive content made several artistes full of talent to be drafted to do cameo roles giving the audience a glimpse of their exuding skill. Every character, however much they looked alike in outlook, they are cast in different models and makes, ensuring infusion of variety to reflect the multiplicity of layers they represent in a complex society. Editing reaches a fine sharpness which brings both adventurous and narrative sensitivity to the viewer in astute focus taking him to the next scene without leaving him to linger unnecessarily in a single visual stilled to feel the sense of insecurity to shift without being held back. The slum scenes and the scenes depicting violence captured not only in close-ups and medium close-ups bringing the needed clarity and importance of the action and the event, but also the expressions which register their failures and frustrations. Domestic pressures The writer-director dwells on a subject that lives kissing the soil and socially relevant issues within the current environment of the youth for whom every avenue and issue is a challenge. They wish to abandon the unpleasant domestic, social, cultural and occupational pressures apparent in every sphere of life. They individually and severally decide to quit life and work here. With that set-up in the background, Mille Soya tells a tale without a story being woven in conventional sense. The script flows with no established pattern imprinted on it. It gives the appearance of a natural systematic flow of sporadic events erupting and shaping within a disorganized social environment. Atmosphere is full of avenues to throw the youth out of the track, and to lead them away from the beaten track. Politics, poverty, crimes and disillusionment have compelled the youth to mental poverty driving them to seek pleasure and success elsewhere and Italy was found to be the most convenient for them. They undertake the hazardous journey to better their prospects not knowing what lies ahead in unknown climes, times and lands. However, their immediate desire is to escape from the existing bitter reality. What comes afterwards is secondary. The filmmaker who didn't design to take the filmgoer to a world of illusion through a world of reality adopted a cinematic technique that suited the theme as well as the content of unconventional thinking of a group of disappointed youth. For instance, Pradeep and Princy do not conform to two young lovers of today. The boy is shorter than the girl which makes them not an ideal couple. But, circumstances of desire to make money abroad and that singular common interest brought them together. Social transformation among the youth had its say on love as well, Boodee seems to emphasise. Social layers A fine cinematic presentation, Mille Soya is created on a structure that befits its varied social layers with scenes spotted from different locations and arranged in a way to convey the speed with which events come to pass and thoughts begin to flit in fleeting seconds. Pradeep as an amateur musician symbolises the light-heatedness of the youth deficient in depth and intellectual activity. Socio-religious cultural matters that contribute to foster a meaningful momentous life evaporate into thin air giving only a temporary respite being drawn into life. Such men are mere floating objects with no objective or known destination to reach. Their expectations were not materialised when they were stranded in Bulgaria on arrival in Europe. Death and disease stared at them. The content of the film as transient and transitory as the life the youth lead is staunchly couched in a vague form which was trimmed into shape by the content. It is from the form which is more central to this movie of mixture of conventional and unconventional conceptions from which the assiduous filmmaker had moved into the content which takes the viewer into a commensurate grip. Social reality which inspired Boodee to recreate it in cinematic illusion is evident in the day to day life that exists in the environment. Mille Soya is a fine novel cinematic exercise that brings a fresh sense of cinema to the Sinhala filmgoer. How its content envelops the mental constitution of the viewer is a new experience within the context of Sri Lankan cinema that any filmgoer would find refreshing and innovative. Boodee took seven years to complete it, but, it takes only an instant to wrap the viewer in a mix of fantasy and reality to show what life actually is. **** Back **** |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
Produced by Lake House |
