Film Review

Sulanga Enu Pinisa

A superb cinematic debut
 

by E.M.G. Edirisinghe

Textually, a magnificent weaving, Sulanga Enu Pinisa is visually absorbing and penetrative. Yet, how did Sulanga Enu Pinisa (For Wind to Blow), on its journey westward, become The Forsaken Land (Sapalath Deshaya) still baffles me.

However, perceptually I see The Forsaken Land reflects a panoramic objective view of an arid landscape inhabited by torrid mortals which could be anywhere in the world.

On the other hand, if we take it as Sulanga Enu Pinisa, it is a subjective view of a forsaken people living in despair and dismay seeking or needing no comfort. Their plight is written in soil on the dry dust draught hit forsaken land of a forsaken people. But does the reference to Jaffna betray the spectator in the first reading, but not in the second ?

This is technically, pictorially and directorially a stunning maiden effort of a Sri Lankan filmmaker. Cinematically it brings out wholesome images one would hardly see in Sinhala cinema. Innovatively composed images produce suggestions and expressions.

The content and the form is so neatly interwoven that each melts in the other diluting its identity. The physical environment as well as the men and women merge with each other in such poetic unity and striking integrity that one sees earthly life coming to light in the surroundings.

The bare essentials of the people affected by war both environmentally and emotionally, are reduced to two basic needs which demand satisfaction are food and sex. The principal focus of The Forsaken Land is sex, directly or indirectly.

With the war raping the sanctity of family and family values, unconventional anti-social sex had taken root in the frugal condemned living. That forms the only factor which keeps the life moving in this spiritual desert where life exists at lazy lethargic pace with the soldier being the only exception who exploits the stilled environment with speed and determination.

Dimensions

Each scene in the film is packed with a load of senses opening several dimensions and layers. For instance, Anura's sister taking a bucket of water to the soldier who was inside the toilet.

Unmarried, she is sexually frustrated. The moment he spoke to her, she addresses him as 'malliye' in a clear animated tone, meaning not 'younger brother' but 'dear young boy'; it carries the connotation of sexual arousal in her maiden heart.

The water was taken to the toilet because it took her physically closer to him. On the other hand, her subconscious had sensed that he was in the nude inside. The soldier rushing to the toilet was evidently pulling down the zip ready to remove the trouser which excited her itching sexual desires.

Her body and mind are begging for sex, and later when she finds her sister in-law in bed with him she loses her hopes which leads her to commit suicide later being defeated at every turn of events.

When Anura's wife threw all the doors and windows of the house wide open inviting the soothing wind to blow in from anywhere, it was symbolic of the cultural, moral and spiritual degeneration into which the war itself or its fallout could bring into man.

Once the winds of sex were blown in, all doors and windows denying any entry for anything else other than sex. Sex whether it is in advanced stage of pregnancy, homosexuality, abuse of children, old age, road or bed, it is immaterial.

Frustrated men and women with no prospects of healthy future in sight, are obsessed with sex either in practice or in fantasy. Dust, shrub jungle, lakes, huts, pathways and pots smoothly integrate with the withering life of the inhabitants whose emotions are almost totally drained. Essence of natural beauty and spiritual beauty has disappeared from the phase of earth.

Horizontal progression

The entire film from the beginning to the end moves in a linear horizontal progression that knocks the spectator to a stunned exercise to come into grip with a neatly woven impressions with an eventful compression.

Its horizontal mobility befits the social immobility where the content formally and visually merges into a formidable unit of poetic excellence.

The only beam that squeaks into this gloomy rustic static image is the moving bus which is symbolic of modernity and casts the faint link it paints with the civilization beyond this emotionally and economically parched land.

The infrequent and scant use of dialogues elevate the potency and the spirit of the visual language to a clear sententious depth. It gets the spectator to read the visual with an insight which complements the integrated composition. It strongly and effectively transmits the vision of the filmmaker graphically and ethereally.

Story of the little bird as told by the grand father dragged on a little too far with his seductive overtones, but it finally ended in fusion with the totality of environment which portrays that every being is sexually sensed. That little bird is still looking for a husband as every woman is.

In The Forsaken Land the family unit has lost significance and sanctity while the basic instinct for sex as in the case of animals remained active and virile.

The sound is realistically and meaningfully used. It enlivens and strengthens the essence and feelings innate in the composition to the delight of the filmgoer.

It creates a resounding impact on the viewer with multiplicity of sensitivities supplementing the scarcely used verbal assertions. Photography is superb with the visual being made to speak and delineate where words are found inadequate and unexpressive. The camera speaks so loudly and vividly that each frame is a complete creation.

For instance, the scene in which the soldier climbs the hill to go to the toilet and the same route Anura's wife takes to go beyond the toilet bypassing it in leisurely manner; but they are visually expressive enough to indicate the physical proximity to nudity.

Similarly, she strays spraying her sexual debauchery into the jungle with her underwear removed itching for sexual pleasure, the only cheer that is there in the arid rustic atmosphere.

Socially, the dominant force in a war ravaged civil society is the army which is portrayed corrupt, exhausted and indecent caused by unbearable stress and confinement to restricted freedom which is universal in a war situation where life has no value and morals have no place.

Instant pleasure for them is a constant need like the rapidity with which the shots are fired from a fire-arm in soldiers' hand.

Imposing complex content and the advanced mechanism used in the making of this film may make someone to comment that it could be understood in ten years hence. It is not so; it is a film that speaks to the today's audience, and it should not only be viewed, but also be read into in its cinematic language.

Such great films as Citizen Cane, Bicycle Thief and Independence Day are a toast of elevated taste then as well as now. A good work of art is a perennial asset with ever increasing poetic value. So Sulanga Enu Pinisa too, will be, I suppose.

The rustic people in the narrative are totally devoid of religious sentiments which generally fortifies the inner strength of man. They pay for their immorality with insensitivity, instability and despair.

All of them are in the hope of blowing a wind into their forsaken land, to rub-down their aches and relieve their pains. To assume that going to Kataragama makes them religious, itself shows the spiritual bankruptcy and moral degeneration.

They merely hope for gains on vows and promises with no effort to be religious in the spiritual or moral sense. Asoka Handagama says that his village in Me Mage Sandai was not built in the sky but on earth itself while Vimukthi Jayasundara says that his village in Sulanga Enu Pinisa was built in the sky and was brought down to earth.

That is how two individual artists of the same genre, of the same era did give expression to their vision of the village and the life in it.

A critic has no right to read his own vision into a creation. However, each film should be read and viewed objectively to bring out the conent into the focus of the viewer. In this exercise, the critic might interpret the work back to the writer or the director by unearthing what the subconscious of the creator had unwittingly found into the content or framed into the image.

Thus Sulanga Enu Pinisa marks a landmark in the history of Sri Lankan cinema.

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