Kings and infidels, cops and gangsters

By Uditha Devapriya

“Étonne-moi!” – Sergei Diaghilev to Jean Cocteau

“There’s nothing here that astonishes me.” – A friend on seeing Nombara 17

The Sinhala cinema has made a fetish out of two genres: the historical epic and the crime thriller. These have been among the biggest box-office draws from the last 75 years. They have often been combined with other genres: the historical epic with the romantic drama (Sandesaya, Veera Puran Appu, Maharaja Gemunu), the crime or gangster thriller with the buddy cop (Nombara 17, Magodi Godai). They have featured the same casts and have been directed by the same director. They have always resonated with popular audiences, though not so with critics and reviewers. And they have always been recycled.

Once you identify the basic themes and motifs associated with these genres, it becomes easy to deconstruct the typical historical epic and gangster thriller. To be sure, directors have imposed endless variations on these works. No two films are the same. Nevertheless, the basic outlines mirror each other. This is why Sunil Ariyaratne’s Vijayaba Kollaya (2019) seems eerily similar to Sandesaya (1960), and why there’s little to distinguish between those 1980s gangster thrillers that paired Vijaya Kumaratunga with Sanath Gunatilake.

The general trend in both these genres today is to play it safe. That usually means using the same cast and the same crew. In the early days, this was not much of a priority. Sinhala film directors, like the Jayamanne brothers, worked with something that passed for a repertoire of actors. They used the same actors, like Rukmani Devi and Eddie Jayamanne, often in the same kind of role. With the expansion of the studio system, producers shifted to hunting for fresh talent, mostly through the press. It was at this point that the likes of Gamini Fonseka, Mallika Pilapitiya, Kanthi Gunatunga, and Punya Heedeniya emerged.

The industry faced a renaissance between 1965 and 1977. After 1977 everything changed. The underlying, dominant ethic was no longer artistic merit; it was profit. That necessitated a paradigm shift in not just the type of films made, but also the way in which they were to be made. The early restrictions, such as the requirement that one had to make a short film before one could obtain financing for a feature film, were abolished. This gave much greater freedom to the studios and individual producers like Sunil Soma Peiris. But it also compelled them to focus on a narrow range of genres, themes, and issues. The actors who made their way to the top during these years found frequently themselves cast in the same genres, the same kind of film. Among them were Vijaya Kumaratunga, Sanath Gunatilake, Freddie Silva, Sabeetha Perera, Robin Fernando, and Wilson Karu.

The Indian film has been granted the honorary moniker of masala cinema. If this is so, the Sinhala film can be termed as achcharu cinema. I am not being tongue-in-cheek here: the truth is that most Sinhala films tend to be so confused about their intentions that they freely go hither and thither, unmindful and unaware of the direction they want to take. We can often predict the ending: in Nombara 17 (1989), for instance, we know, before the hero does, about the identity of his two lost brothers. The Sinhala film has few virtues, but many vices. Among its vices is its inability to surprise us. Even the least informed spectator can guess what the characters take seemingly forever to realise. I would argue that in no other genre is that more glaringly obvious than the thriller and the epic.

What is predictable about the gangster thrillers is not just their stories, but their structures. The typical American Western follows the same format, but the story is made more vivid and interesting by the inclusion of side-plots, secondary characters, and other devices. The Sinhala crime thriller uses these same devices, but they turn out to be as predictable as the main plotline. Often comic relief is provided by an actor like Freddie Silva, Tennyson Cooray, or Bandu Samarasinghe, yet they get mixed up in side-plots that are more predictable than the main story. In Nombara 17, for instance, Freddie Silva finds himself enmeshed in a love affair which serves more to distract than to add colour. In these films, these actors fulfil the same function that Eddie Jayamanne did in the early Rukmani Devi films.

The historical epic is no different. Here too one notices a tendency to use comic relief. Even in as great a work as Maharaja Gemunu (2015) – which together with Aloko Udapadi (2017) goes down as one of the better Sinhala historical epics of recent years – the director resorts to light humour. In itself this is an effective device: it breaks the flow and the tension. In the case of Maharaja Gemunu we witness episodes of carnage right before the comic vignettes, prominently the sequence where the hero despatches female garments and jewellery to his father. In this regard Aloko Udapadi and, to a greater extent, Maharaja Gemunu broke away from the never-ending cycle of Mahavamsist epics like Mahindagamanaya (2011), which did away with light humour in favour of sombre ethno-religious homilies.

The moral universe occupied by the crime thriller is clearcut and Manichean. On the one hand you have good, on the other evil. There is very little moral ambiguity, even if the villain is redeemable or is shown to be working for the sake of a loved one. The biggest source of moral ambiguity in these films, however, is not the villain, but the heroine, who sometimes happens to be related to the villain. One of the earliest local films to feature this dilemma is Vasantha Obeyesekere’s Diyamanthi (1976). Nombara 17 features it as well. The prototype here is Bruce Lee’s The Way of the Dragon (1972), in which the villain is revealed to be the uncle of the hero’s lover. The Way of the Dragon also inspired another trope used by Sinhala crime thriller directors: the deployment of a Chuck Norris gun-for-hire before the revelation of the villain. In Nombara 17, this gun-for-hire is played by Sanath Gunatilake.

There is greater depth and ambiguity in the historical epic, though even these films operate within a Manichean framework. There are signs that the genre is improving in this respect, however. In Aloko Udapadi, to give one example, we know that the “Tamil” usurpers are the villains, and Valagamba’s final triumph over them represents the triumph of good over evil, of light over darkness. Yet these usurpers are shown not as menacing savages, but rather as intelligent if not shrewd political manipulators. Elara in Maharaja Gemunu is characterised by intelligence and self-doubt, qualities which popular narratives deny him. Played by the intrepid Jackson Anthony, he emerges from the story not so much an antagonist as a foe worthy of the protagonist. Indeed, Dutugemunu’s father and brother are shown to be much bigger obstacles to his ambitions than the Tamil and hence “infidel” king.

From all this, one can argue that while the crime thriller has become as formulaic and inert as ever, the historical epic, within the ideological confines it has had to work, has progressed somewhat. In terms of production values, it has improved considerably. One can contend that the genre has gone as far as to revert to the mood and tenor of its earliest prototypes. Sunil Ariyaratne’s Vijayaba Kollaya, for instance, evokes not merely the plotline but also the texture of Lester James Peries’s Sandesaya. These films have also benefitted from assured direction, of the sort one simply did not see with Mahavamsist epics like Mahindagamanaya. Maharaja Gemunu, for example, would not have become a hit without Jayantha Chandrasiri, just as Abha (2008) would not have set records without Jackson Anthony. The acting matters as well: Uddika Premaratne in both Aloko Udapadi and Maharaja Gemunu, Sajitha Anthony in Abha. The gangster or crime thriller, by contrast, lacks these qualities.

There is, however, one limitation in the historical epic, which a friend pointed out to me recently. Barring the swashbuckling adventure epics like Vijayaba Kollaya, these films tend to repress the heroism of its heroes. What I mean here is that the protagonists are denied any real agency in the flow of events and incidents they live through. Instead, these events are granted almost divine attributes. The telos of the Sinhala epic film is the triumph of one ethno-religious group over all others: the triumph of the Dhamma over the infidel. What that pre-empts is the triumph of the king. Unlike the Indian or the Western epic, the prince or king does not emerge as a hero in these films. Instead, he becomes an instrument of the forces he deploys to conquer his enemies. That explains the weak final act of Maharaja Gemunu: the confrontation between Dutugemunu and Elara is short, anticlimactically so. Perhaps with the passing years, directors will address this limitation.

The writer is an international relations analyst, researcher, and columnist who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com