by Gunadasa Amarasekera
(October 23, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) When some media sought my views on Aba, I kept silent. I did so for a number of reasons.
Aba for what it is worth was becoming a box-office success which I thought would get the people back to the cinema hall and thereby salvage our dying cinema industry. Hence, I did not want to dampen the public interest with my comments. I decided to take kindly to it.
Secondly, in my view, it was a failure as a work of art, a cinematic creation that deserved serious consideration. It has failed to satisfy the basic requirement we expect of any artistic creation, namely to provide us with a solid human experience felt and lived through, which alone justifies its claim to be taken as art and which alone is capable of touching our hearts.
In Aba, what was in its place was a number of cleverly crafted, tantalizing, quixotic episodes hung together by a disjointed narrative replete with "sound and fury signifying nothing". I agree with Sumathy when he says that it left him cold and unmoved. It could not even evoke Sinhala chauvinism in my heart! Since it has failed on this score it was meaningless to proceed further and get lost in irrelevant, extraneous implications as evidenced by our academics who have lost their way among trees having missed the wood. However, I preferred to keep my verdict for a later day.
Thirdly, the controversy it has engineered and still raging has ignored or side-stepped the main issue, the evaluation of Aba as a film- discussing its merits as a cinematic creation and has gone off at a tangent for a display of punditry by our academics as to the implications engendered by this clever counterfeit.
What was more depressing was the naïve simplistic interpretations and theories advanced to justify their petty views. No sensible person would have wanted to get into that murky morass. My friend Bandu Silva’s piece was a refreshing departure and, in fact, it was his piece that prompted me to set out my views. He has managed to synthesize something meaningful from this disjointed, bizarre narrative and has exposed the underlying sub-conscious motives that have gone into the crafting of this counterfeit: It is a fine exercise in de-construction.
To be fair by Jackson Anthony, I do not think he would have been consciously aware of any of these motives attributed to him or anticipated any of these implications that have spurred our academics to go at one another’s throat to flaunt their punditry. Jackson must be laughing his sides out and enjoying every bit of it. He has made good use of these pundits as publicity agents.
Anyway we should bear no malice towards this amiable, lively character who has overnight turned out to be an omniscient wiz-kid. He is a product of the times we live in. He too is well aware of it. This is the age of the counterfeit when we are at a loss to differentiate the fake from the genuine, the Bol Pilimaya from the Gal Pilimaya. So why bother about it? The wiser way to set about would be to do what that one and only sane man living among a mad populace did, if things become too intolerable. - Sri Lanka Guardian
Aba for what it is worth was becoming a box-office success which I thought would get the people back to the cinema hall and thereby salvage our dying cinema industry. Hence, I did not want to dampen the public interest with my comments. I decided to take kindly to it.
Secondly, in my view, it was a failure as a work of art, a cinematic creation that deserved serious consideration. It has failed to satisfy the basic requirement we expect of any artistic creation, namely to provide us with a solid human experience felt and lived through, which alone justifies its claim to be taken as art and which alone is capable of touching our hearts.
In Aba, what was in its place was a number of cleverly crafted, tantalizing, quixotic episodes hung together by a disjointed narrative replete with "sound and fury signifying nothing". I agree with Sumathy when he says that it left him cold and unmoved. It could not even evoke Sinhala chauvinism in my heart! Since it has failed on this score it was meaningless to proceed further and get lost in irrelevant, extraneous implications as evidenced by our academics who have lost their way among trees having missed the wood. However, I preferred to keep my verdict for a later day.
Thirdly, the controversy it has engineered and still raging has ignored or side-stepped the main issue, the evaluation of Aba as a film- discussing its merits as a cinematic creation and has gone off at a tangent for a display of punditry by our academics as to the implications engendered by this clever counterfeit.
What was more depressing was the naïve simplistic interpretations and theories advanced to justify their petty views. No sensible person would have wanted to get into that murky morass. My friend Bandu Silva’s piece was a refreshing departure and, in fact, it was his piece that prompted me to set out my views. He has managed to synthesize something meaningful from this disjointed, bizarre narrative and has exposed the underlying sub-conscious motives that have gone into the crafting of this counterfeit: It is a fine exercise in de-construction.
To be fair by Jackson Anthony, I do not think he would have been consciously aware of any of these motives attributed to him or anticipated any of these implications that have spurred our academics to go at one another’s throat to flaunt their punditry. Jackson must be laughing his sides out and enjoying every bit of it. He has made good use of these pundits as publicity agents.
Anyway we should bear no malice towards this amiable, lively character who has overnight turned out to be an omniscient wiz-kid. He is a product of the times we live in. He too is well aware of it. This is the age of the counterfeit when we are at a loss to differentiate the fake from the genuine, the Bol Pilimaya from the Gal Pilimaya. So why bother about it? The wiser way to set about would be to do what that one and only sane man living among a mad populace did, if things become too intolerable. - Sri Lanka Guardian
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