Silent cry of wild strawberries

Twilight. Tawny sunrays touch the old building. The building has the traces of an old church. Its face looks on a densely-leafed path that’s not taken for ages.

A tall figure in his sixties is glancing across a cocoon of old gold leaves. His gaze then shifts into two distant figures, young and old, approaching him. Leaves are crushed under guests’ feet, but the sound it makes is inaudible.

Disciple: I think we have met before, haven’t we, Mr. Abeysekara?

The young man studies Tissa Abeysekara’s profile. I see them close in the rear. My sight site expands, gradually yet perfectly.

Master: Of course we’ve met before. I think our talk was on literature then.

Tissa: Yes. And this time we are going to talk cinema. Your master wants it to be about Ingmar Bergman.

Disciple: That’s really great, master! I wrote a review on his ‘Wild Strawberries’, remember sometime back?

Tissa: I am already dead then. My all time favourite is ‘Cries and Whispers’, though.

Master: I know son you are wondering why we met Tissa to talk about Bergman. Well you have already given one reason.

Disciple: I have?

Master: (as if ignoring disciple) Speaking of ‘Wild Strawberries’, I wonder if it influenced you in Nidhanaya.

Disciple throws a quizzical look at master. I see him quite close on his face and try to read his expressions. He is quite deep in his own thoughts. Tissa still listens to master attentively.

Master: Willie Abeynayake’s confession reminds me Isak Borg, in a way.

Tissa: Bergman has a specific technique in scripting ‘The Wild Strawberries’. You can read it as a novel too, since it’s completely a narration. Well yes Nidhanaya has Willie Abeynayaka’s confession – somewhat like a narrator-protagonist blend.

Disciple: If you can explain it, Mr. Abeysekara?

Tissa: It’s like this. In ‘Strawberries’ nothing happens without protagonist’s knowledge, because the protagonist himself is the narrator. Isak Borg knows every single thing that happens throughout the film, you see. Even in the script it’s the protagonist who lays out the story while other characters speak up. So you can read the script as a novel too.

Master: I think you followed that mode in Pitagamkarayo?

It may be a few seconds’ moment, and Tissa’s face becomes moue. Is he reluctant to be honest about his source of influence? No, I simply have been wrong in my judgment.

Tissa: Exactly. I sort of experimented with Pitagamkarayo. I wrote it as a novel, but you can call it a script too in a way because of the dialogues I infused into descriptions. But my descriptions are a little more than script commands.

Master and disciple stare into Tissa’s face. Their expressions have one meaning in common: inquisitive. Tissa carries on.

Tissa: Okay folks why don’t we go take a peek inside?

As they walk inside, I hear some distant voices. But one voice stands out. It’s a crystal clear English accent of a Swedish. That voice – which is mine - echoes in the almost empty interior. It sounds as if a book is read out.

Ingmar Bergman’s voice: I devoted my interest to the church’s mysterious world of low arches, thick walls, the smell of eternity, the coloured sunlight quivering above the strangest vegetation of medieval paintings and carved figures on ceilings and walls. There was everything that one’s imagination could desire – angles, saints, dragons, prophets, devils, humans.

Tissa: Heard those words? That’s Bergman explaining his childhood in his autobiography. And let me read out some of his words from the preface of ‘The Wild Strawberries’ script.

I see Tissa – again in close reach. I can almost touch him. The scene gradually fades into the altar where a priest stands giving an icy look to a little boy – it should perhaps be me – his only audience.

Tissa’s voice: I have been asked, as a clergyman’s son, about the role of religion in my thinking and filmmaking… religious emotion, religious sentimentality, is something I got rid of long ago – I hope. The religious problem is an intellectual one to me; the relationship of my mind to my intuition.

The sight of the priest and the boy fades out and the scene shifts back to the three men.

Disciple: Oh I see. Remember master how Sara prefers the active guy over the other, who is more into religion? She is just the modern version of Isak’s namesake cousin. Maybe Bergman was disillusioned seeing how impractical his own father is, as a priest. But I think everything around him had a tinge of spirituality.

Tissa: Bergman, my son (patting on his shoulder), is more than a mere filmmaker. He is a prophet, like all great poets. I believe that at some high point in human expression, all art becomes one. Up there it is the message - not the medium - that matters. Bergman is very much integral to the world of Shakespeare, Pushkin, Tolstoy and Dante.

Gloominess is there, though with a soft acquiescent look around it. Crickets chirp in step with the slow fall of night. They stay on blissfully unaware how dense the night’s thickness will grow. Everything is breathtakingly becalmed.

Sachitra and Samodh

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