Vimukthi’s big question

by Anuradha Kodagoda

Call it fortune, providence, destiny…. Vimukthi Jayasundara is one of the more fortunate film makers in the South Asian region, in that he hit the celluloid jackpot with his maiden venture, winning the Camera d’Or award at Cannes Film Festival 2005, for his ‘Sulanga Enu Pinisa’ (Forsaken Land). That it was a most prestigious award coveted by seasoned filmmakers is an understatement, but for a debut filmmaker to win it is beyond a dream come true.

That Jayasundara would use the recognition as a stepping board to blaze a white hot trail into the international film festival arena, was to be expected.

And after, ‘Forsaken Land’ in 2005 he has made ‘Between Two Worlds’ in 2009, ‘Chatrak’ in 2011 and ‘Dark in the White Light’ (Sulanga Gini Aran) in 2015, all of which would have established him as a film maker to be reckoned with in the international arena.

‘Dark in the White Light’ (Sulanga Gini Aran), his latest cinematic venture, competed for ‘The Golden Leopard’ award at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland this year.

This was the first time that a Sri Lankan film has been chosen to compete in the main category of the Locarno Film Festival.

Sunday Observer caught up with Vimukthi Jayasundara, who describes ‘life is a joke and I’m playing it the best way that I can’ – for a chat about his career as a filmmaker, and the big question he is not afraid to ask.

Excerpts:

Q: ‘Dark in the White Light’ what is it about?

A: Hmm... I’m quite tired of explaining my own work. What do you think it is about? What did you feel when you saw the film stills and posters?

Q: Well, I have not seen the film but however, it seems something to do with Buddhist philosophy.

A: Why do you think its ‘Buddhist philosophy’? Why is it not just philosophy? There is a character in the film who plays the role of a Buddhist monk, but it is not just about Buddhist philosophy. The film is actually about life and death.

I don’t believe in understanding life through a philosophy. With or without knowing any of the philosophies, life still exists. I live my life and portrait that in a film the way I felt and lived it. Somebody can analyze it as Buddhist philosophy or any other philosophies, which is not my concern.

Q: What do you expect through film-making?

A: Through film-making or any other thing that I do in my life, I expect to live happy and feel good about me. The way we feel about ourselves is very unique. The way I feel about my life is unique to me and I cannot feel the same way that you feel about your life. Through film-making I try to share my experience, complications, fears, desires and ultimately what I have seen and the way I feel about life and I wanted to know whether they have seen or felt the same way or not. I think this is the ultimate desire of anybody.

Q: Through ‘Dark in the White Light’ what is the feeling that you share with your audience?

A: I have a problem. That is, how people live their entire life with the fear of death. We often think of the world in terms of rigid distinctions between life and death, body and mind, spirituality. But I have always been interested in questioning these fixed totalities, exploring their complex intersections and the political as well as philosophical issues underlying them. In this regard we can see this film as an exploration of one and the same character in its multiple guises.

Of cause, one can see this film, at one level, as the contrasting stories of a young man seeking spiritual enlightenment and middle-aged doctor searching for material wealth, with a third person linking the transcendental dimension of life with that of material advancement. The young man seeks to become a medical doctor in order to heal people.

Upon his realization that ultimately, he decides to experience the touch of his opponent by a near-death experience.

His attempt to experience death, however, ends up in him guided towards an alternate path of curing the human disease.

There is a middle aged centre in the middle of the city where desperate individuals visits in order to earn some cash by selling their body organs. Once again, the thematic of not only death, but also of religiosity are introduced, but this time from the opposite end: the man not only runs the business with an attitude of indifference but he also justifies his work with an appeal to divine morality.

One of his major business partners is a doctor, who runs, by all accounts, an ordinary medical practice during the day but under the shadow of night he turns inexplicable into a shadowy figure who with mysterious expressions of pleasure and pain, entangled with extreme behaviour.

It is also not quite certain whether he is carrying out this in order to earn money per se. At one point he assaults his own middle-man, repeatedly claiming that he cannot be bribed by earthly pleasure, such as alcohol. He only releases a terrifying raw onto the night sky.

I wanted to explore the continuities and discontinuities of these three characters and challenge the established regimes of distinctions. Are we all searching for the same thing via different paths or are we treading on the same path in order to reach different end points? Perhaps it is possible to say that this film is, ultimately, about my fascination with the ‘big question’ that we all wanted to know but are afraid to ask out loud: What is the meaning of life? Is there a meaning to life?

Q: What make you want to know more about death?

A: The whole world is busy knowing what’s happening in the other planets and there are lots of questions and they are so serious about finding solutions. However, I have seen very handful people who actually curious about knowing one thing about death. In our life nothing is certain other than death. So why shouldn’t we be curious about that? Although people do not know anything about death, they live the entire life with the fear of death. But why? If you don’t know anything about death, why do you fear about what you don’t know? I wanted to overcome this unsolved problem and talk about it through my film.

Q: Through the process of making the film, how far were you able to overcome your problem?

A: There are two ways that you can look at death. One is as the miserable way most of the people tend to think about death, and the other is, look at it with confidence and certainty? As we all know death is the only certain thing in life and each step that you take in life is making you close to your grave not anywhere else, so why not look for it? If you are positive about death, that would be the most beautiful thing in your life.

The most important thing is once you are ready to accept death in positive psychology you never want to miss a moment in your life. Because then life become more valuable to you.

Q: Although in your film you are trying to reveal the truth about life and death, cinema is something fictional. How do you explain this to your audience?

A: When you are around thousands of fools, you don’t mind becoming another one fool. Yes it’s true that not only cinema but the whole world and its activities are all fictional. I really don’t care to know how people take this as real or as some nonsense. Unfortunately when you say it’s a film, people take it as a fiction and not as real as life. So then what is real? There’s no such thing called real. Today reality has also become fictional. What you eat, drink, talk, watch and everything you do is completely created. The real life is replaced with products, services, religions, countries, politics and many more nonsense. It is a battle in between the real and fictional world.

Q: Why do you make films?

A: Cinema is no longer something I wanted to live-in. The reason why I make films now, is different to what I had in my mind when I was making my first film. Cinema technicality, formats, methods, glamour or any other things are no longer are values in my desire to make films. Now I use this magical format to convey how I feel about life, how I understand my life, why I live and what death is.