Sunday, May 27, 2007

“Sankranthi” - the bankrupted Sinhalese Cinema

I hadn’t watched a Sinhalese film for ages, probably I swore myself not to watch one again the last time I did. So yesterday I went to see “Sankranthi” a movie by Anuruddha Jayasinghe, staring Sangeetha Weeraratne, Bimal Jayakody and W. Jayasiri.

Dr Gerard (W. Jayasiri) a Primatologist with Phd s from an american university is studying the behaviour of apes in jungles with a nature photographer Sunimal (Bimal Jayakody). They spend a prolong amount of time in jungles leaving behind Pam (Sangeetha Weeraratne) young wife of Dr. Gerard. Apparently Pam is couple of decades younger to Gerard and starts off an intimate relationship with Sunimal.

It’s the perfect story for a porn movie I guess, but the only nudity the movie had was the posterior of Bimal and Jayasiri, which was disgusting and totally out of place for the movie.

I have seen cinematographers making use of much shorter and stupider story lines, so apart from the ill witted story, the director sucks too. The movie was dull and was a total waste of time and money.

I’m yet to see a “digestible” Sinhala film after Jayantha Chandrasiri’s “AgniDahaya”….

6 comments:

  1. We've got such talented actors and artists, I don't know why they come up with such lame themes or why such good actors agree to take on those roles.

    I like Prasanna Jayakody's films like Ira Madiyama, Pura handa kaluwara and pawuru walalu. Jayantha Chandrasiri's work is a bit difficult to digest but it's still excellent quality.

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  2. I think Guerrilla Marketing was total disappointment

    Yes Sasani, Ira Madiyama was one of all time best Sinhalese films.

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  3. hmmm.. Keep it up mahasen try watching porn movies instead singhala movies. Guess you are watching lot of porn movies and you can remember all the stories to compare with other movies..

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  4. I saw the posters for this when I was in sri lanka. I thought it would be something different to the usual faux-art melodramatic fair we are usually subjected to; I was under the impression it would be a physiological thriller.

    I am all for nudity and sex in Sri Lankan film, I think it would largely help our repressed society loosen itself from the christo-colonial bonds that have weighed us down for so long. But the movies we make suck. Weather they are so called ‘art films’ or gallery pandering pop-corn films; 99.95% of these films are contrived, utterly boring, poorly scripted, badly shot, overacted and vaguely directed pieces of rubbish. The poster who said we have talented actors and artists in Sri Lanka clearly isn’t familiar with the length and breath of Sinhalese cinema. ‘Pura Handa Kaluwara’ and ‘Sankara’ are probably the only two films worth a damn made in the last two decades, which is just heartbreaking. Even the great man, Lester James’s lastest film, ‘Ammawarune’ was a complete farce, and golden boy Prasana’s most recent work ‘Ira Madiyama’, was for all its technical grace was unfulfilling cinematic experience. The saddest indictment of the local industry is this: you could easily count the number of truly talented directors, writers, cinematographers, actors and actresses who have emerged post-1990 on one hand.

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  5. And you would still have fingures to spare in that count :)

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