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| Sunday, 3 October 2004 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Lester - Sumithra Crosswired By Jayanthi Liyanage She is from a typically Sinhala, extended family, radicalised to a
peak, and free in her impetuousness. He represents the bland, anglicised,
thorough middle class, always spruce in his dress, in outfits chosen by
her. One never sees him in sarong. She is more prone to drop such
customary guards and he refers to her as "the more courageous"
of the two. He has an uncanny humour and when taking a telephone call to her away from home, persists in saying "hello" to the dog. She is a practising, not a ritualistic, Buddhist and he is a Roman Catholic. These trifling differences aside, they are close to each other's hearts, families and careers and have been able to make a lasting imprint on the motion picture industry world over, with their extraordinary conception of the Sri Lankan consciousness of religion, culture and social insights. 'Ran Salu' and 'Gehenu Lamai' are typical examples of cinematic perceptivities by which they had endeared themselves to the local rural and urban film audiences alike. I am at close quarters with Dr. Lester James Peries and Sumithra Peries. This close, one begins to distinguish the imperceptive subtleties of their inner characters. Getting each one's response to the traits or idiosyncrasies of the other is even more interesting. I see a different Sumithra or Dr. Peries to the ones I had read about on print. For instance, I begin to feel the full onslaught of Dr. Peries' humour. It was only the other day, at the launch of their website at the National Museum that he joked of the appropriateness of "ending up at the Museum at this stage of our careers," adding as an afterthought, "I could even be sent back to Portugal as an artefact!" That casual aside was to the Portuguese origins of "Perez" in his name "Peries." Both turn on me in an unexpected joint blast. "Finally, the snake has come between us after forty years of filming and we are in the preliminaries of divorce proceedings, as each one of us might have a better chance at film making, without the other." "Eh?," I fumble, flustered. "Can I write about it, or is it very private?" Both explode in merriment. Frivolities aside, this light-hearted conversation on the joys, or heart burns, of domesticity and of being together, behind the professionality of film direction, reveals their perceptions of each other and give us an inkling of how the team "Sumithra-Lester", which is considered as "one unit", yet in actuality, are two separate creative entities, rubs together and remains close together. Thoughts of Each Other Lester: The thinking process has long ceased and I now just accept her. For good or for evil, we have taken the pledge and that has worked. As a couple, I think we share a lot in common which is why there is compatibility. As a person, I think she complements me in a lot of ways. One is that, I would never able to handle the difficult process of the technical side of filming, in that I cannot edit. She can edit as she is a qualified editor and can tackle the editing machine. 'Machine-things' and I do not very well work together. An editor is really the heart of a film and a film is really born on the editing table. It is very important for two people to have qualities which are complementary, as well as things they can share, to be able to stay together. Sumithra: We got together such a long time ago and what really attracted me to him is now almost lost in the mist of time. Yet, obviously, there is a bond or commonness. I discovered him better after I married him. I have found him to be extremely caring, kind and responsible. I regard myself as more impulsive and careless. He had grown in a nuclear family but my mother died when I was young and my father was in Avissawella while I was in Colombo with a whole lot of young people growing up together. So there was in me, a certain amount of selfishness, and a spirit of independence which is still there. He recognised that spirit and let me fly alone, anywhere, anytime. When To Be Together and When To Be Apart Sumithra: One year after we married, when Lester received an invitation to go to Mexico with "Gam Peraliya", he let me have that opportunity, and I went, extending my visit to California and New York. I took three months to come back home, but I received no faxes, or telephone messages or SMSs urging me home. It didn't even occur to me that my husband would be fretting at home, which he didn't. We married after six years of having known each other. He cares but does not inhibit me. He has accepted me as I am and that earns mutual respect. When I decided to make my first film, apart from the financial sacrifices he made, he earned my respect more by letting me direct my film the way I want. He knows me too well to impose. Of course, if he says 'do this', I am quite capable of doing the opposite. Lester: At the end of 40 years of being together, I could say with my hand on my heart, that we have never had a major difference, or conflict. Shortly after our marriage, she won a scholarship for one-and-a-half years to France on film study. But that didn't harm our relationship. That I attribute to the fact that we know each other's characters well. I am not the kind of person to get suspicious and set the town on fire if she goes overseas for film festivals without me. We have mutual trust and even the disparity of 16 years in our ages has not been a major problem. What Links Them Sumithra: It would have been a sense of security or solidness that drew me to him. I had a home which was free, but without proper anchors, and he became an emotional anchor for me. When I met him, he was mature and portly with a pipe and I used to go to him for advise about a boy friend who had not called, etc. etc. I was a young woman let loose in France which was the most permissive of permissive societies but probably my sense of values and dignity stopped me short from abusing my freedom. When I got married, my family would have thought I had gone against everything by breaking taboos of religion, insecurity of profession, Lester being married before and our age difference. But my brother acted broad-minded and love-wise, I could not have chosen better. Lester: My life would have been quite different had I married a non-film maker. I am a compulsive reader and she has to put up with my being immersed in a book for hours having to carry on with her own tasks with no conversation between us. Both of us are very conscious of clothes and even at this age of seniority, I am particular about what I wear. But I never buy anything. She does all the purchasing and knows exactly what to buy. She is a shopaholic and whenever she goes abroad, she brings me two important things: one, the new film books which you can't buy locally, and the latest film technology. That keeps me uptodate on what is going on in the global industry. That is why, when I received a honorary doctorate from the University of Peradeniya last year, I was able to make a speech of the future of the cinema. On Domestic Pleasures Sumithra: I am not a housewife. Lester's mother would have been appalled even today, because I don't cook. I like decorating the house and buying decorative things. He is responsive to aesthetically nice things but does not get too involved. He asks me why I do not discipline myself to one style but mix all styles. I like mashed things - a little bit of Japanese here, a little bit of French there. Depending on my various moods, I respond to this variety. My housekeeping is very erratic and he is a better housekeeper than I. He is not tight about money and whatever money that comes in is common. Sometimes I liken him to what Irangani Serasinghe says in 'Sakman Maluwa' - 'You are like a priest in a temple'. I am a person who is by no way methodical or economical but he has never expected those things of me. We don't have big money, or big savings, but God willing, something had turned up. He felt more insecurity than I and said that it could not last. But I say, yes, it will last. Lester: I have a phobia about food and need to have a bland diet. She has to put up with re-adjusting our meals. She is a person who likes her food while food and I are almost enemies. For years after I was born, I was unable to digest milk. I had to survive on goat's milk which is an aphrodisiac. Once when we dined with the former French Ambassador, the first dish was baked crab. I am allergic to all shell fish and have never eaten crab or prawn while prawns are Sumithra's favourite dish. When I told of my allergy to the Ambassador, he was so embarrassed to announce that the next dish was giant lobster! So tolerance of different dietary interests has been an important attribute of Sumithra. Competing with Each Other's Fame Sumithra: Fame has never been an issue of contention between us. Somebody once asked me, quite horridly, do you know that you are competing with your husband? He rejoices in whatever success that I have had, and I am a participant in his success. I feel bad when he is slighted. He did the script in 'Sakman Maluwa' and when I got the Sarasaviya award for the best film, I felt that I did not deserve it, but he did. That was a genuine reaction. I could not hold back my tears because it did not seem fair. Were we of the same age, there would have been more competition between us. Lester: There was antagonism to 'Wekanda Walauwa' competing at the Sarasaviya Awards because it had not been shown to the public, or even to the critics. What some people said was that I was preventing some of the younger generation film makers from winning an award, by the presence of my film. The film was entered because it was invited to the Cannes film festival and ran for two months in Paris. She discusses with me before making a film. I may not totally agree with the story, but I tell her to go ahead. Her theme has been consistently the situation of women, except for her last film, where the story is stretched with a little bit of me also coming in. In retrospect, she proved to be right. The film became the best film of the year and was picked up by Fukuoka, going into its permanent collection. Aesthetics of Framing Scenes and Relationships Lester: When she is not at a film location, there is a slightly different look to the scenes. The paintings of my artist brother Harry is hung in our house. All his paintings have been framed by her because the right kind of framing is very necessary to bring out the quality in the painting. Sumithra: A film is visually dependent on quality. Unless the whole team is concentrating on sensitive support to the scenes, the effect can be detrimental. Deep down, I think I have innate judgement. I always say that Lester has inborn and instinctive creative talent which he has tutored over the years. I have some talent and a certain tutelage in the mechanics of film making. Over the years, I have grown to come up with responses which could have come due to his influence. What is marvellous in a relationship, says Lester, is the dialogue that goes on for endless hours, through -out one's life. Back from Fukuoka Watching her entry "Sakman Maluwa" at the recently held Fukuoka Film Festival in Japan had opened for Sri Lanka's premier woman film maker, Sumithra Peries, a startlingly new eyesight of her own cinematic creation. Having seen the scenes unfold in heightened colour and sound through the greatly advanced technology available to Japanese film makers, an impressed Sumithra says, "I was enraptured by my own film." In comparison, viewing the movie in local theaters had seemed like "seeing it in candle light." She asks, "How can our village people enjoy, or respond to a film when it is poorly presented due to flaws in lighting, colour and sound?" Her exasperation sums up the annoying hindrances the rural, and probably, the suburban local film goer too, could be experiencing while in the throes of the elementary joys of motion picture entertainment. Also, the collection of movies at the Fukuoka festival had not been so much about "exposing harsh realities" than of rekindling one's faith in the "essential goodness of people." In the entry space dedicated to "human and spontaneous goodness", there had been around 27 Asian entries, including the Sri Lankan movie 'Suriya Arana'. Very rarely are the better qualities of human beings depicted on screen, feels Sumithra, and comments that all too often, "It is the baser, and cruder instincts that are exploited in a film script." Fukuoka also served as a "window to Asia", extending an arm for the future generations, by way of being an archives for preserving Asian films, spanning Japan to Iran, and are accessible by film enthusiasts across the world. 'Sakman Maluwa' had joined the ranks of Sumithra's previous entries to the festival, which are 'Loku Duwa' and 'Duwata Mawaka Misa', together with Dr. Lester James Peries' 'Wekanda Walawwa', 'Kaliyugaya', 'Avaragira' and 'Rekhawa', all of which are now stored in the permanent collection of Fukuoka. Compared to our film audiences who often view a film, with a non-questioning attitude, taking it for granted, audiences at the Japanese film festival questioned the artistic and culture symbols shown in the films, responded to the screen reactions and made an attempt to understand the different nuances of the images and the backdrops they were viewing, Sumithra observes. "For example, they questioned the relevancy of the Mithila painting and the snake image shown in 'Sakman Maluwa' and were very impressed with the film's final delivery line, 'The snake is in your heart!" This kind of deep absorption by the audiences led to an exploration of different cultures surveyed in the movies and I saw how celluloid images could transcend cultural barriers. That was a very rewarding experience and I realised that films could be the best ambassadors for a country," is her surmise. |
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