Film Review:

Uppalawanna: Fine cinematic creation

E. M. G. Edirisinghe

CINEMA: Sri Lankan culture, is immensely enriched by Buddhism. The essence of Buddhist way of life is rich cinematic material for any film-maker. Yet, it requires courage and insight to reach and tough a subject that covers a Buddhist theme of spirituality.

Both Sumathi Films and Prof. Sunil Ariyaratne had the courage and initiative to realise it in moving pictures, and the product is a fine cinematic creation.

Uppalawanna inspired by the ethical and spiritual content in the tale of Theri Uppalawanna delineates a unique pictorial movement on two structurally parallel themes. One is the spiritual movement that pervades the entire film from beginning to end, and the other is man’s innate desire to satisfy worldly pleasures and pursuits which rhymes with materialism.

Moving delicately on these two corresponding rhythms, Uppalawanna demonstrates itself as one Sinhala movie which brings combined spiritual discipline and cinematic joy to Sinhala cinema.

In pursuance of spiritual emancipation, the ordained Buddhist nuns found themselves in indirect conflict with the insurrection of the radical youth struggling for political supremacy. Their path of violence did not agree with the path of peace of the nuns. The villagers who were trapped in between, shunned all violence.

The nuns depended on them for physical sustenance. These two separate paths were cinematically assimilated with neat narrative discipline and realistic progress of unfolding events.

Finally, it demonstrates that spiritual emancipation sought with dedication causing no mental or physical injury to any other being is the only right path and the only true liberation.

Ironically it is the forest that nurses and shelters both spiritual and material liberation that young women and men are in search but in separate hide-outs wide away from each other, both mentally and physically.

Followers of the Buddha Dhamma fall into four categories of religious significance - bhikkhu bhikkhuni and upasaka and upasika.

Emancipation

Treading the Noble Eightfold Path to eclipse craving and realise eternal emancipation, all these four categories co-exist with no discrimination whatsoever on their noble endeavour.

However, admission of women into monkhood (bhikkhuni) posed some practical problems even in the days of the Buddha and Uppalawanna enlightening the viewer with a lucid doctrinal disposition leading to what was the reason for reluctance to grant ordination to them.

It is the first time whether on screen or on stage that this intricate question is discussed, and Uppalawanna explains the responsibility and challenge a female monk has to confront within a pious secluded life.

Uppalawanna creates a soothing cinematic sense on the filmgoer being it relieved from an overdose of romance that normally abounds most of our films.

Every frame is conclusively designed and every verbal composition is delivered with a measure of conviction to infuse a beam of strength providing a spiritual effect into the narrative that no matter earthly or ethereal could be solved by murder. It tells that true liberation is liberation from internally conceived sensuous traps which ensnare one within the endless Samsara.

Failure to see this as the eternal truth leads one to grope for solutions in war and murder without viewing it inward.

Uppalawanna (Sangeetha Weeraratne) before she renounced the household life had to suffer the unsatisfactoriness in worldly life when she lost her father, mother and her lover. Fomented by insecurity and agony of loss, she realised that there is no cure for these scores by sticking to household life.

When ordained as a Buddhist nun, she found solace in the Dhamma. It then, turned out to be a hazardous journey to remain in the monastery following the principles in the Dhamma a nun is expected to strive to uphold.

The perilous spill-over of the temporal life next door had direct impact on her which compelled her to react instantly and positively to treat a wounded murderer and had to face the consequences that pushed herself out of monastic life that she honoured so much.

Calm atmosphere

Photography is consistently absorbing effectively capturing the calm atmosphere that prevailed within the seclusive environment which accommodated the composed and measured life pattern of nuns.

The insurgents robbed this serenity for their advantage. The shots fired in the jungle nearby were so resounding that it disturbed and pierced through the cloak of religious atmosphere in which morality survived.

It even disturbed the sense of Chief Nun who is more experienced and advanced in religious discipline that ordination brought to her. This unpleasant element and tensed reaction within the monastic order was pictorially captured alive to give the audience an impressive image of the hallowed environment.

Finally a logical, refined and meaningful end to the film renders it the magnificence of good cinema with resourcefully woven material. She had to leave the monastery into self-imposed solitude for the good of all resident nuns who were mostly to suffer the consequences of treating a wounded killer.

Consequently she was re-convinced to realise that ultimate peace and happiness is to be found only within the Dhamma when the nuns and the villagers turned up to invite her back to the monastery where she was concentrating to realise the unsatisfactoriness of mundane life, hoping for eternal bliss one day in Sansara.

Podi Aththi (Sandali Chaturika Welikanna) as a teenaged novice who adds natural childhood frolics, is superb in her performance as the little Nun whose ever charming presence is a treat to watch as a light diversion within the precincts of the monastery.

Her pranks and the amusing disposition is pleasantly interlaced with the strict code of discipline that binds the rest of the nuns, and theoretically she too, has to adhere to secure herself within the order of nuns.

General conflict generated by commitment to rules of conduct and the forces of deterrence did never disturb her because she took the life in its lighter spirits and strides with her child-mind straying itself into mischief, but being adequately restrained to follow the tenets guiding her in monastic life.

Restrained role

Sangeetha Weeraratne in her restrained and composed role as Uppalawanna gives a fine and unusual performance which enlivens the film to its intellectual exercise.

However, the young monk at the adjoining temple, who although projects an assertive and restless figure of an emerging monk within a reign of turmoil, his mannerism like scratching the bald head does not match with the dynamic personality he is expected to command.

Had he been a more mature monk with similar disposition, that would have carried a greater degree of reality. A film that enriches not only our cinema but also illuminates our religion and culture, Uppalawanna is a twin success cinematically and culturally, which reaffirms Prof. Sunil Ariyaratne as one of our foremost film-makers.

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