Surveillance and survival
February 21, 1014
February 21, 1014
In post-war Sri Lanka, Sinhala cinema is all about triumphal cultural nationalism. What options does a Tamil film-maker have, faced with the twin threats of a surveillance state and a populist mainstream cinema from Tamil Nadu that dominates popular imagination? By SIVAMOHAN SUMATHY
“FOR the motherland” was the final call made to the audience at the close of the film Abaas the young hero—historically, the would-be Pandukabaya—holds high majestically a “sacred” sword standing atop a hill, framed dramatically by towering mountain peaks. The film relates the story of a young prince raised clandestinely by the natives of the north-central hinterland in fear of his jealous and despotic uncles. It draws upon an early instance of Sri Lankan history, a defining moment of the Sinhala identity, genealogically speaking. Pandukabaya occupies an iconic place in the nationalist imaginary, providing authenticity to memories of a glorious past and the story of the consolidation of the power of Sinhala kings.
Aba was released in September 2008, at the height of the final phase of Eelam War IV which came to a bloody and decisive close in May 2009. In September 2008, the war was intense and the war cry was everywhere, even as the death toll among combatants and civilians on both sides was rising in the north. In the rest of the country, bombs, blasts, checkpoints, assassinations and disappearances kept the populace captive to a culture and psychology of fear, suspicion, uncertainty and hopelessness, while the government on one side and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on the other peddled a rhetoric of moral fortitude.
On the cultural front, Sinhala cinema, the dominant Sri Lankan film industry, had to respond to this phenomenon that had the national imaginary in a vice-like grip. The rise of the historical drama becomes significant here, from a “sociology of film” perspective; Sinhala films assumed the responsibility of bringing order into the disarray of civilian life. It has its emergence within a culture of fear and anxiety and growing chauvinist sentiments on the one hand and increasing militarist and centrist consolidation of power on the other. While the young hero Aba as Pandukabaya would defeat the evil forces in history and go on to consolidate his power in the north-central plains, the cradle of Sinhala civilisation, the film concludes with a defining moment where he is granted the authority to mobilise the marginal forces around him by divine powers.
