Did Rani miss manorani ?

(A film that avoids the ‘Mannerism’ of a Biopic: Rani)

by Bhagya Rajapakshe
bhagya8282@gmail.com

This is only how Manorani sees Richard. It doesn’t have a lot of what Richard did. Although Manorani is not someone who pays attention to the happenings in the country. It was only after her son was kidnapped that she began to feel that this was happening in the country.She had human emotions. But she was a person who smoked cigarettes and drank whiskey and lived a merry life.”

(Interview with “Rani” film director Ashoka Handagama by Upali Amarasinghe – 02.02.2025 ‘Anidda’ weekend newspaper, pages 15 and 19)

The above statement shows the key attitude of the director of the movie, “Rani” towards the central character of the film, Dr. Manorani Sarawanamuttu. This statement is highly controversial. Similarly, the statement given by the director to Groundviews on 30.01.2025 about capturing the depth of Rani’s character shows that he has done so superficially, frivolously?

A biopic is a specific genre of cinema. This genre presents true events in the life of a person (a biography), or a group of people who are currently alive or who belong to history with recognisable names. The biopic genre often artistically and cinematically explores keenly the main character along with a few secondary characters connected to the central figure. World cinema is proof that even if the characters are centuries old, they are carefully researched and skilled directors take care to weave the biographies into their films without causing any harm or injustice to the original character.

According to the available authentic reports, Manorani Saravanamuthu was a professionally responsible medical doctor. Chandri Peiris, a close friend of her family, in his feature article on Manorani in the ‘Daily Mirror’ newspaper on 06^th November 2021, says this about her:

“She was a doctor who had her surgeries in the poorest areas around Colombo which made her popular with communities who preferred their women to be seen by female doctors. She had a wonderful manner with her patients which my mother described by saying, ‘looking at her is enough to make you well …. When it came to our outlandish group of friends, she was always there to steer many of us through some very personal issues such as: unplanned pregnancies, teenage pregnancies, mental breakdowns, STD’s, young lovers who ran away and married, depression, circumcisions, break-ups, fractures, dance injuries, laryngitis (especially among the actors and singers) fevers, pimples, and even the odd boil on the bum.”

But the image of Rani depicted by Handagama in his film is completely different from this. According to the film, a major feature of her life consisted of drinking whiskey and smoking cigarettes. Her true role is unspoken, hidden in the film. A grave question arises as to whether the director spent adequate time doing the research? to find out who Manorani really was. In his article Chandri Peiris further says the following about Manorani:

“Soon after the race riots in 1983, Manorani (along with Richard) helped a great many Sri Lankan Tamils to find refuge in countries all over the world. Nobody knew about this. But all of us who used to hang around their house kept seeing unfamiliar people come over to stay a few days and then leave. Among them were the three sons of the Master-in-Charge of Drama at S. Thomas’ College, who were swiftly sent abroad by the tireless efforts of this mother and son. It was then that we worked out that their home was a safehouse. … Manorani was vehemently opposed to the terror wreaked by the LTTE and always wanted Sri Lanka to be one country that was home to the many diverse cultures within it. When the ethnic strife developed into a full-on war with those who wanted to create a separate state for Tamil Eelam, she remained completely against it.”

According to the director of the film, if Rani had no awareness of what was happening in the country and the world, how could she have helped the victims survive and leave the country during that life-threatening period? It is clear from all this that the director has failed to fully study the character of Manorani and what she did. There is a scene where Manorani watches a Sinhala stage play with much annoyance and on her way back home with Richard, she is shown insensitively avoiding Richard’s friend Gayan being assaulted by a mob. This demeanour does not match the actual reports and information published about Manorani. How did the director miss these records? It shows his indifference to researching background information for a film such as this. He clearly does not think that research is essential for a sharp-witted artist in creating his artwork. In his own words, he told the Anidda newspaper:

“But the information related to this is in the public domain and the challenge I had was to interpret that information in the way I wanted. I am not an investigative journalist; My job is to create a work of art. That difference should be understood and made.”

And according to the director, “I was invited to do the film in 2023. The script was written within two to three months and the shooting was planned quickly.” Thus, it is clear that there has been no time to study the inner details related to Manorani, the main character of the film, or the character’s Mannerism. Professor Sarath Chandrajeewa, who published a book with two critical reviews on Handagama’s previous film ‘Alborada’, emphasises in both, that ‘Alborada’ also became weak due to the lack of proper research work’ (Lamentation of the Dawn (2022), pages 46-57).

Directors working in the biopic genre with a degree of seriousness consider it their responsibility to study deeply and construct the ‘mannerism’ of such central characters to create a superior biographical film. For example, in Kabir Khan’s 2021 film ’83’ the actor Tahir Raj Bhasin, who played the role of Sunil Gavaskar, said that it took him six months to study Sunil Gavaskar’s unique style characteristics or Mannerism.

Also, Austin Butler, the actor who played the role of Elvis Presley in the movie ‘Elvis’ directed by Buz Luhrmann and released in 2022, said in a news conference: After he started studying the character of Elvis, he became obsessed with the character, without meeting or talking to his family for nearly one year, while making the film in Australia before, during Covid and after.

‘Oppenheimer’ (2023) was written and directed by Christopher Nolan, in which Cillian Murphy plays the role of Oppenheimer. Nolan read and studied the 700-page story about Oppenheimer called ‘American Prometheus’ . It is said that it took three months to write the script and 57 days for shooting, and finally a two-hour film was created. The rejection of such intense studies by our filmmakers will determine the future of cinema in this country.

Acting is the prime aspect of a movie. The character of Manorani is performed very skillfully in the movie. But certain of her characteristics and mannerism become repetitive and in their very repetitiveness become tiresome to watch. For example, right across the film Manorani is shown smoking, drinking alcohol, sitting and thinking, going towards a window and thinking and smoking again. It would have been better if it had been edited. The audience is thereby given the impression that Manorani lives on cigarettes and whiskey. Although smoking and drinking alcohol is a common practice among some women of Manorani’s social class, it is depicted in the film so repetitively that it creates a sense of revulsion in the viewer. In the absence of close-ups and a play of light and dark, Manorani’s mental states cannot be seen in their intense three dimensionality. It is a question whether the director gave up directing and let the actress play the role of Manorani as she wished. At the beginning of the film, close-ups of Manorani appear with the titles but gradually become normal camera angles in the film. This avoids the use of close-ups of Manorani’s face to show emotion in the most shocking moments in the film. Below are some films that demonstrate this cinematic technique well.

‘Three Colours: Blue’ (1993) French, Directed by Kryzysztof Kies’lowski.

‘Memories in March’

(2010) Indian, Directed by Sanjoy Nag.

‘Manchester by the Sea’

(2016) English, Directed by Keneth Lonergan.

‘Collateral Beauty’

2016) English, Directed by David Frankel.

Certain characters appear in the film without any contribution to building Manorani’s role. Certain scenes such as the Television news, bomb explosions, dialogue scenes where certain characters interview Manorani are not integrated into the film’s narrative and feel forced. The scene with the group of hooligans in a jeep at the end of the film is like a strange tail to the film.

Richard’s sexual orientation, which is hinted at the end of the film by these thugs in the final scene, is an insult to him. It is a great disrespect to those characters to present facts without strong information analysis and to tell the inner life of those characters while presenting a real character through an artwork with real names. The director should not have done such humour and humiliation.

There is some thrill in seeing actors who resemble the main political personalities of that era playing those roles in the film. In this the film has more of a documentary than a fictional quality but it barely marks the socio-political history of this country during the period of terror in 88-89. The character of Manorani was created as a person floating in that history ungrounded, without a sense of gravity.

The film’s music and vocals are mesmerising. But unfortunately, the song ‘Puthune’ (Dearest Son), which has a very strong lyrical composition, melody and singing, is placed at the end of the film, so the audience does not know its strength. This is because the audience starts to leave the cinema as soon as the song starts, when the closing credits scrolled down. If the song had accompanied the scene on the beach where we see Manorani for the last time, the audience would have felt its strength.

Manorani’s true personality was a unique blend of charm, sensitivity, compassion, intelligence, warmth and fun, which enhanced her overall beauty, as evidenced by various written accounts of her. Art critics and historians H. W. Johnson and Anthony F. A Johnson state in their book ‘History of Art’ (2001), “Every work of art tells whether it is artistic or not. And the grammar and structure of the form will signal to us that.”