Artistic freedom versus pseudo morality

Speaking on artistic freedom Professor Lalitha Mendis stated that she wrote a letter to the Editor on the film Aksharaya 'Letter of Fire' even without viewing the film as she felt that artistic freedom had been suppressed.

It had been prevented by higher authorities from being screened although it had been approved for screening as an adults only film by the Public Performance Board. Also because the film was focused on the social problem of incest. Since writing that letter she had seen the film.

Prof. Mendis is of the view that films, drama and books are effective mediums to make people think about socio-cultural issues prevalent in a society. In her letter, Prof. Mendis had cited Deepa Mehta's film Water which dealt with the plight of socially outcast widows in India.

Another Mehta film Fire directed attention to the plight of intelligent and vocal Indian women who were imprisoned in lonely loveless marriages and expected to fulfil a traditional role of a mindless vassal in the home.

Mehta skilfully deployed the consolation, companionship and physical tenderness they derived from a relationship, (not explicitly shown as a lesbian relationship) to illustrate her point.

The films were subjected to venomous attacks in India. The question here Prof. Mendis said, is whether there was merit in Mehta's artistic focus on these two subjects or whether she should have given up because of the protests.

Did she as an artist have the right to express her ideas and opinion and make a statement on a social issue? Prof. Mendis felt that 'Letter of Fire' is a film that falls into the same category. She proceeded to recollect and analyse it.

She said it was a surrealistic film in which the Director and Scriptwriter had placed their characters in a decidedly unreal situation but not an impossible one and then enacted the consequences, tensions and emotional upheaval caused by the situation faced by these characters.

She said it reminded her of some of the Rohl Dahl short stories which were made into films and the kind of extraordinary circumstances that some of the characters in Stephen Spielberg films found themselves in and Spielberg's portrayal of the tension in some parent child relationships. The Director of 'Letter of Fire' had made the story unfold through skilful scenes of recall, re-enactment and images.

Prof. Mendis said she does not really know which character the Director of 'Letter of Fire', Asoka Handagama considered to be his central character, but to her it was the woman. The woman in the marriage comes out as quite a deranged personality, confused and cornered in her misery in a situation that she herself precipitated, for she trapped the Judge into marriage, knowing full well that he was her father.

She thought thereby that she could bridge the gap she felt there was between her and the family she was born to as the illegitimate love child born of an illicit union between the nanny and the young son of the family who later became the Judge.

She transfers an extremely obsessive and possessive love towards the son she bore (fathered by the Judge) the only love of her life. There is an oedipal desire for oneness with the child, for she says in one scene regretfully, we were one, we shared the same heart beat till the doctor separated us.

Prof. Mendis said that here the Director portrays an exaggerated version of what often happens the world over but more so in Asian societies the fierce damaging effect of the possessive love of some women towards their sons.

The woman does not want him to grow, measures him up daily with a tape measure, takes baths in the nude with him, encourages him to suckle her breasts and nurtures him in a psychological damaging overpowering obsessive mother-son relationship.

What semblance of normality this sad family sustained was shattered when the son committed murder unwittingly. She said that that was the springboard from which the film took off and it never flagged in its dramatic interest up to the end.

Prof. Mendis recalled that when the Judge learned after the son was born that he was in an incestuous marriage, it completely broke his spirit and he was devastated.

He was an honourable man, who became a recluse and withdrew the courts and the world in general. The role was played brilliantly by Ravindra Randeniya - expressionless face, of a man who had just not come out of the initial shock, lost in thought and escaping into a world of music, and who did not have the ability to come to terms with the tragic turn of events.

He just could not have a normal relationship with the son.

He is aloof and cold towards the child. But in a few scenes the Director does show in a subtle way that there is deep rooted concern of the father towards the son. Concern perhaps but no companionship.

Also some sympathy and empathy for his deranged wife, (for after all she was his daughter) despite the fact that she had precipitated this appalling situation.

Prof. Mendis said that the mother of the child played by Piumi Samaraweera also gave a brilliant performance, demonstrating her state of confusion in all the multiple facets of her personality. At times she tries to be a 'normal' mother. At times the dignified magistrate but fails in one scene where she lets dignity fly and collapses into tears. Next she is the possessive desperate and distraught mother.

At times of tension she reverts to being the child of the Judge and wants him to comfort her with bed time stories. At other time she laughs hysterically and precipitates an enactment of the day her mother learnt of the shocking relationship between her and the Judge. (A fact that killed the woman's mother.) Prof. Mendis said that the film reaches a climax in a dramatic and tense museum scene where the woman finally breaks and goes berserk and death to her is a welcome relief.

The multiple facets of her personality were played very convincingly and with great sensitivity by this actress while she flitted from one facet to the other.

Prof. Mendis went on to say that the performance of the two children, the son of this incestuous marriage and the daughter of the museum security guard were a delight to watch, offering a contrast between a normal child and a psychologically damaged child.

Their lines were perfect and their behaviour expertly directed. The roles and lines in these scenes and those in which the security guard (a fine performance by Saumya Liyanage) are semi comic and provides some light relief in an otherwise serious and tense film.

The son grows up not knowing or learning the norms of life. e.g. he thinks it would be quite normal for him to take a bath in the nude together with a young teenage girl.

A wonderful intelligent and lovable but psychologically damaged little boy with a oedipal attachment to the mother and not in touch with the real world. Professor thought the characterisation was perfect and there was no contradiction throughout the film of the character that the son portrayed.

All in all, Professor Mendis said it was a film that explored human emotion and the extent to which different minds can cope with shocking situations. She said it was definitely an adults only film but a serious film with clever imagery that the mind keeps returning to explore as the Director does, the tragic consequences of incest, a dysfunctional family and an abnormal mother and son relationship.

She said she found it a refreshing change from the run of the mill Sinhala films and more akin to the wonderful serious explorative films that have been produced by Sinhala and western directors.

She said its portrayal of incest did not in any way imply approval or endorsement of it The situation presented was bizarre but the bad taste that this unfolding tragedy left about the desperately hopeless outcomes and consequences of incest is very real.

She said the Director of the film had dealt with a problem in our society which is hidden and not talked of and swept under the carpet while the victims of such situations suffer in silence.

I asked Professor Mendis whether she thought it was a filthy obscene film for this was one of the comments on it. She said certainly not.

The word obscene was difficult to define. e.g. would we say that the ancient erotic sculptures in India are obscene, or the bare breasted beautiful frescoes at Sigiriya, or the sensual drawings of George Keyt, or Michael Angelo's David, or the Naked Maja by Goya. She said some sense was brought into this debate in UK which passed the Obscene Publications Act in 1959.

Section 4 of the Act provided immunity for noted artworks and stated that "a person should not be convicted of an offence if the published material was for the public good on the ground that it is in the interest of science, literature, art, or learning or of other objects of general concern."

Perhaps in Sri Lanka we should have a means of measuring what is obscene and what is not. She said that the land mark case that was tried under this UK act was against Penguin when they published the unabridged version of DH Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover. Its explicit scenes were dissected in courts but the jury found in favour of publishing it.

Prof. Mendis also said that at times we seem to be confused about what should and should not be shown on the big screen. e.g. Sinhala films shy away from showing a kiss. So does Bollywood. It is believed that this goes against our culture.

However scenes where women are slapped by men are shown without any qualms. Does this mean that slapping women is part of our culture? A culture that decidedly gives pride of place and high esteem to women?

[email protected]