Features

World of Prasanna Vithanage

Published

5 years ago

2021/10/9

By Uditha Devapriya

The films of Prasanna Vithanage come back to you long after you’ve seen them. They move you, chasten you, sometimes make you angry, and frequently make you question life. The characters in them are usually ordinary people: It’s the situations they are placed in that are extraordinary. As with the crusader in The Seventh Seal and the priest in Diary of a Country Priest, they encounter a moral dilemma that ends up testing their very souls.

Vithanage’s characters often fail these tests, though sometimes they win. Yet the payoff in these films comes from seeing not how they win or lose, but from how the world at large responds to their moral dilemmas. In Anantha Rathriya, to give just one example, Suvisal ends his friendships, even with the girl he intended to marry. He does so not just because he wants redemption for the sin of violating his servant, but also because everyone disagrees with his resolve to go out into the open and seek forgiveness.

Nimmi Harasamaga’s character in Ira Mediyama also refuses to believe official accounts about her husband. Unlike the old man in Purahanda Kaluwara, the journey she undertakes to find out what happened to him is both physical and metaphoric. Suvisal informs us at the very beginning of Anantha Rathriya that he is going back to the past: Again, both physically and metaphorically. This is the fate that typically awaits Vithanage’s protagonists: They have to go back to their pasts to confront their sins. For Suvisal, the attempt is a failure; for the old man in Purahanda Kaluwara, it is not; for Nimmi Harasgama, it goes both ways.

But any hopes he may have had about reconciling with that servant, dissipates when she walks away from him. Vithanage does not give us a heroic ending. The simple truth is that his world has no room for heroes; as Suvisal’s girlfriend tells him, he wants to confess what he did not because of any remorse for his crime, but because of his desire to free himself from the memory of his rape. Defiant and angry, she tells him that he can never escape his past. To this Suvisal says nothing; he merely frowns at her.

Such dilemmas seem so convincing not because of the people who wind up facing them, but because of their impact on them. Not until the very last quarter of Anantha Rathriya, for instance, does Suvisal realise the full weight of his crime. When he does, he tries to release himself from the memory of his sin. The protagonist in Purahanda Kaluwara is desperate to know what happened to his son; like Nita Fernando’s Baba Nona from Paangshu, he refuses to believe the official record. His catharsis is considerably different from Suvisal’s: He goes to a water hole and stares at a group of children frolicking in a lake nearby. Blind and a little hard of hearing, he nevertheless smiles: Perhaps at the children, but more likely at having confirmed his suspicions, and at the hope that his son may be alive.

Yet the specificity of these locations belies a universality that transcends time and space. Hence Anantha Rathriya, though taking place during the second JVP insurrection, feels and looks contemporary. There is hardly any sense of time or place in Purahanda Kaluwara: The only object that offers a clue is the Grama Niladhari’s motorbike. Even then we are not sure when or where the story is taking place: The war seems a distant reality, its impact felt in the village only through the death of Vannihamy’s soldier-son.

At one level, Vithanage’s stories play out in specific locations: A drought-ridden village in the North-Central Province in Purahanda Kaluwara; Batticaloa and Colombo in Ira Madiyama; Bogawantalawa in Oba Nathuwa Oba Ekka. Vithanage frequently turns hills and mountains into metaphors; in his debut, Sisila Gini Gani, the mists and mountains form a crucial part of the story, and play a large part in the tragedy it centres on.

The very first shot of Anantha Rathriya shows us a misty hilltop. Interposed with the sound of beating drums, it ominously foretells what is to come. In roughly the same vein, the coldness of the romance in Oba Nathuwa Oba Ekka, between the pawnbroker and his wife, is echoed in the coldness of their surroundings. From misty mountains, Vithanage turns to sun-baked expanses as well, particularly in Purahanda Kaluwara and Ira Madiyama. He works with contrasts of atmosphere and weather: Misty or sun-baked, these places evoke the tensions of his characters, situating them in their surroundings.

In Ira Madiyama, Colombo and the Eastern Province conjure two different worlds.

In Akasa Kusum, this rift turns inward: Sandya Kumari loses her sense of time as she retreats to the past, fantasising about her stardom after a scandal puts her into the spotlight. Like Gloria Swanson from Sunset Boulevard, Malini Fonseka epitomises Sandya’s schizoid imaginings. When all romantic illusions are shattered in Oba Nathuwa Oba Ekka, similarly, the woman retreats to her fantasies. Betrayed by her husband’s secrets, she kills herself.

Curiously enough, in only two instances do these characters choose death or are pushed into it: The boy in Sisila Gini Gani and the woman in Oba Nathuwa Oba Ekka. The first death sets in motion the events of the film, while the second ends it. Vithanage tries to avoid this fate for his characters as much as he can. Thus, even on the verge of suicide, Nita Fernando retreats to a clandestine affair from the past in Pawuru Walalu. Like Blanche DuBois from A Streetcar Named Desire, she is saved by the kindness of strangers.

The tension between social reality and moral complexity is what determines the course of these stories. Vithanage’s characters resolve this tension in different ways: Most of them push themselves into the thick of things, while others try as much as they can to avoid them. Suvisal, for instance, takes up the advice his friend, a lawyer, gives him, and refrains from revealing himself. His prospects are too dear for him to lose.

Not until much later do we realise what he has staked until now: His wealth, his career, and his marriage. When he lets go, everyone he knows leaves him. That is what makes the final scene so searing, yet so fitting: Despite everything he gave up for the woman he raped, nothing can or will wash away the crime or his guilt. Like the hero (or antihero) of Tolstoy’s Resurrection on whom Suvisal’s character is based, he does everything, not for the love of this woman, but to atone himself. In Tolstoy’s novel the protagonist’s pursuit of atonement turns our attention to the sordid conditions of Tsarist Russia’s prisons and penal colonies. In Vithanage’s film, it turns the focus inward, to Suvisal’s conscience.

Enveloped by their desires, these characters evoke both pity and loathing. This is a quality few Sinhala films, among them those of Lester James and Sumitra Peries, possess; almost every work of Vithanage contains it. At once culturally specific and broadly humanist, they enrapture us in ways none of his contemporaries have been able to match.

The concept of sin and atonement looms large in Vithanage’s world. That has a great deal to do with his childhood and teenage experiences; as he recounted to the authors of Profiling Sri Lankan Cinema, while he grew up in a predominantly Buddhist and Sinhala atmosphere in Panadura, his neighbours happened to be Catholic. Waking up to the sound of hymns and sermons, he would invariably imbibe their world.

Later on, when he became enamoured of the cinema while still at school, he would return home, take a train back to Colombo, and make the acquaintance of Father Ernest Poruthota. There is thus something distinctly Catholic about his work, not just in the religious sense, but in the secular too: The catholicity of a perceptive and deeply sensitive artist.

Somewhere between Anantha Rathriya and Akasa Kusum, I grew up. These were formative years for Sri Lankan cinema. Difficult years, too: In the midst of a never-ending conflict, it almost went down under. Looking back, I can’t say I’m entirely satisfied with the trajectory of our cinema during the last decade of the war. Many daring films have come out, as have many daring directors. Yet not a few of them seem content in recycling the same motifs and themes, the same narratives and stereotypes, to the point of tedium.

My fascination with Prasanna Vithanage’s oeuvre, in that sense, stems from a recognition of the fact that more than any of his peers, he has stuck to his guns and given us some highly original films. Not all of them can claim to be as good as his best, and yet, the best he’s given us so far convinces me that he’s the best our cinema has got. With another highly ambitious project, a tragic romance set in the twilight of the Kandyan kingdom, yet to come, I can only hope that he continues giving us more of the best, and more of the same.

(The writer can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com)

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Features

The challenge of keeping value-based politics alive

Published

4 hours ago

2026/05/28

Sahan Weerasooriya

Anti-migrant protests in Durban, South Africa. BBC

The current outbreak of anti-immigrant protests in Durban, South Africa is bound to have taken many a subscriber to value-based politics or political idealism quite by surprise. After all, this is evidence that despite the historic accomplishments of nation-builders of the stature of the late President Nelson Mandela it cannot be taken for granted that identity politics, including racism in its worst forms, is no more in South Africa.

At the time of this writing details are scarce on the substantive root causes of the protests but it could very well be that economic grievances, particularly on the part of the majority community in South Africa, are contributing considerably to the disaffection. Shrinking employment and material prospects are likely to figure majorly among the factors igniting the unrest.

Fortunately, the local authorities in Durban are losing no time in calling for peaceful co-existence among the relevant communities and are pointing to the vital importance of stepping-up national integration processes. Apparently, immigrants in sizable numbers from neighbouring countries are present in Durban. However, international TV footage of the protests quoted some local authorities as saying that the majority of the immigrants in some centres that housed them were not illegal migrants and had the documents that entitle them to be in Durban.

In the Durban protests the world has fresh proof of the socially divisive consequences of the gathering globe-wide economic disaffection, touched off particularly by the continuing crisis in West Asia. Going ahead, the world would need to brace for increasing identity-based unrest of the kind it is just witnessing in South Africa.

Considering that the material lot of ordinary people everywhere could only aggravate progressively, with the US and Iran showing no signs of negotiating an end to their confrontation any time soon, it will be left to the more democratic and progressive sections of the world community to initiate positive measures collectively to bring a measure of relief to the discontented.

The swiftness with which such relief will be provided would depend crucially on the importance those sections taking up these undertakings attach to value-based politics as opposed to Realpolitik of power politics.

Going by these yardsticks, Italy could be considered to be moving in the right direction. Recently Italy came to the fore in initiating the collective named, ‘Rome Coalition for Food Security and Access to Fertilizer’, which has as one of its aims the swift provision of fertilizer to economically weak African countries.

In a recent statement Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Antonio Tajani, said that a principal aim of the project was to ensure that the farmers of Africa gained easy access to fertilizer, considering that food security is a growing concern among some of Africa’s economically vulnerable countries.

The statement went on to mention that some 30 countries hailing from the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, the Balkans as well as the FAO had been invited to join the coalition. The venture is far-seeing in that food security is main among the reasons for social discontent which in turn could degenerate into endemic political turmoil and bloodshed. Separatist violence and geographical fragmentation of countries wouldn’t be too far behind these developments, as Africa itself has often proved.

It is hoped that more G7 countries would take the cue from Italy and do what they could to ease the hardships of economically distressed countries, particularly of the global South. In these efforts they would need to break rank with the US, which is today brutally indifferent to the consequences of its policy of making ‘America First’, come what may.

Going by current developments, the Trump administration seems to be blithely oblivious to the wider, deleterious effects of its policy course in West Asia. Besides rendering Iran militarily and otherwise impotent nothing else seems to matter to Washington, as regards West Asia. This is policy short-sightedness of an extreme kind. After all, right now West Asia could be said to be sitting on the proverbial powder keg.

On the other hand, Iran is not giving the world the impression that it is doing anything constructive to get out of the policy straitjacket that it wove for itself decades ago. Rather than enter into a policy of ‘live and let live’ in relation to Israel in particular and initiate a process of reconciliation with the latter, it has chosen to operate within policy parameters that continue to damn Israel. This has put Israel always on the ‘defensive’ so to speak and prevented the opening up of space for meaningful dialogue.

That said, Israel is obliged to explore the possibilities of entering into a negotiatory process with the Arab-Islamic world that could lead to a de-escalation of tensions and bloodshed. It cannot continue to look at its neighbours through lenses that distort them as archetypal enemies who should be ‘wiped off completely from the face of the earth.’

In other words, the need is urgent for Realpolitik to give way to value-based politicks. Italy is beginning to prove that the latter approach could be pursued with some success. May be the EU and the UK could throw their weight behind these initiatives as well and establish that international politics could be refashioned on the basis of humane, civilized norms. The UN would need to be fully supportive of these moves and prove an organizational nucleus of the operations that follow.

In fact the time is ripe for people of conscience to collectively stand up on the side of peace and say ‘No’ to war and violence. Organizations such as the ICRC, the WHO and Medicines Sans Frontiers have already taken up this call. Referring to the widespread destruction of health facilities and their dehumanizing results these organizations have said, among other things, that ‘This is not a failure of the law. It is a failure of political will.’

True, ‘failure of political will’ among those powers that matter accounts for the runaway, uncontrollable nature of war and destruction in contemporary times, but more fundamentally it is a failure of the human conscience. It could very well be that the phenomenal levels to which violence and war have been unleashed today have had the effect of deadening consciences. This is a matter for urgent study and wide discussion.

Features

Vesak celebrations … with Cuteefly

Published

4 hours ago

2026/05/28

Sahan Weerasooriya

Perfect for celebrations, gifts, and meaningful occasions // Gift pack

I would describe Indunil Kaushalya Dissanayaka as innovative and creative, and she operates under the name of Cuteefly.

Indunil always comes up with something novel to celebrate special occasions, and she does it with candles … and that’s her profession.

She was in the spotlight when she created a happening scene, with candles, for Christmas, Sinhala and Tamil New Year, and Valentine’s Day.

As lanterns light up Sri Lanka for Vesak, the Colombo-based candle maker is quietly turning wax and wick into little pieces of the festival.

Candles reflecting Vesak themes

Her candles reflect Vesak themes – light, peace, remembrance, giving, etc., to enable you to fill your Vesak celebration with devotion and beauty.

Among her Vesak creations is a lotus-shaped soy candle, scented with sandalwood, lavender, etc., meant to burn during this Vesak Poya Day.

Indunil Kaushalya Dissanayaka: Customers
praise her for her creativity

These handcrafted Vesak candles are perfect for offering at the temple, she says.

What makes her creations so novel is that they come in different shapes, scents, themes, and all are handmade.

What’s more, her customers have heaped praise on her for her creativity.

According to Indunil, her creations are perfect as a thoughtful gift … to bring beauty, unity, and light into every moment.

Says Indunil: “Our beautifully handcrafted Unity candles are designed with premium detail and love, making them perfect for celebrations, gifts, and meaningful occasions.”

Cuteefly, says Indunil, is available online.

Readers could contact Indunil on 0778506066 for more details.

He Facebook Page is: Cuteefly.

Handmade with love

Features

Dark Spots …

Published

4 hours ago

2026/05/28

Sahan Weerasooriya

Yes, dark spots do crop up on the skin, especially with sun exposure and, of course, as the skin ages.

However, these tips should be of immense benefit to those who are faced with dark spots.

* Lemon and Honey Glow Mask:

You will need 01 teaspoon lemon juice and 01 teaspoon honey.

Mix the lemon juice and honey well and then apply this mixture, only on the dark spots.

Leave for 10–15 minutes and then rinse with cool water.

Benefits:

Lemon helps brighten pigmentation.

Honey moisturises and heals skin.

Gives a natural glow.

* Aloe Vera Gel Treatment:

All you need is fresh aloe vera gel.

Apply the gel apply on dark spots, before going to bed.

Leave overnight and wash in the morning.

Benefits:

Reduces acne marks and pigmentation.

Soothes irritated skin.

Helps skin repair naturally.

* Turmeric and Yoghurt Paste:

You will need 01 teaspoon yoghurt and a pinch of turmeric

Mix the yoghurt and turmeric into a smooth paste and apply on affected areas.

Leave for 15 minutes and then wash gently with lukewarm water.

Benefits:

Turmeric brightens skin naturally.

Yoghurt removes dead skin cells.

Helps fade dark spots gradually.

Use these packs 02-03 times a week as results are generally seen over time.

You can also try this out: Mix a ripe papaya into a smooth paste and apply to the face, or directly on to the dark spots. Leave for 15-20 minutes and then wash with lukewarm water.