Between Two Worlds

Directed by Vimukthi Jayasundara

(Sri Lanka/France, 2009)

Poetic cinematography of lush tropical landscapes and puzzling scene sequences create the momentum in Vimukthi Jayasundara’s new movie that offers a surreal and also mythical window on Sri Lanka. From the opening image of a man dropped from hundreds of feet into the ocean to subsequent vignettes of his experiences near his rebel-infested village, the viewer soon realizes that no borders exist between fact and fiction, or reality and dream or myth. This blending is creative art and at the same time confusing, for given Sri Lanka’s protracted civil war the audience would like to separate fact from fiction, learn about the country. But that’s not the movie’s motive.

In the middle of the film, two fishermen on a rock retell a universal myth where a beautiful princess will bear a son who murders his two uncles who are kings. So the princess is locked away on an impenetrable island but gives birth anyway, and though the baby is taken by the uncles and given over to fishermen to kill, the baby survives. The kings hear of this and kill all young men his age, but not the prince, who has hidden in the hollow of a tree. Later he fulfills his destiny, killing his uncles and becoming king. The camera moves to a tall tree with a hollow in it.

The fisherman’s myth parallels Jayasundara’s protagonist Rajith (Thusitha Laknath), the youth whose experiences we follow and come to understand as part dream, part reality, to the extent that we do not know for sure what is real and what is imagined, though we can guess. We can guess he imagined the white van spilling into the lake; his murder of a boy and then his sister-in-law; the emptying of the poisoned reservoir by the village’s young virile men; and their subsequent massacre. When we see a final image of Rajith hiding in the hollow of a tree—the only survivor of the imagined massacre—the fisherman’s myth finds a new incarnation and underscores the mythical essence of the picture. The viewer can emerge from Between Two Worlds thinking that Rajith has a fractured psychology as a result of childhood trauma from the protracted civil war—living in constant fear and silence to escape murder; or, he has schizophrenia that feeds the vivid hallucinations we witness on the screen. Whatever the cause of his odyssey-like experiences, or even his existence, that blend dream and reality (hence the title “between two worlds”), the viewer is treated to a work of film art that attains scintillating perfection.

The filming of lush tropical landscapes—steeped in low fog over grasses or bordered by mountains so green they look like fresh wet paint—sustains the movie, forms its rich foundation for the Odyssean structure that plays out without one slip of contrivance or sentimentality. The terrain’s overpowering green is punctuated by the colorful shirts of the characters, clothing often distinguishing who is who in this fable. Skin is also a color—Rajith’s slender male torso is bare from early on when he sheds his orange shirt. When the young men of the village form assembly lines to empty the reservoir with buckets, they chant and strike valiant, warrior poses, their gleaming musculature reaching us in a visceral way—these are young, strong men, ready to fight, to defend. And yet when they are attacked by costumed enemies in the next scene they stand on the lakeshore like passive victims.

The cinematography of barely disturbed earthly wonder, coupled with partly naked men moving stealthily through tall grasses to avoid enemies, and also Rajith’s repeated attempts to rape women, remind us of the primitive origins of mankind. Survival created warriors of young men; existence was about defending a small settlement from enemies; male lust superseded respect for women; and brutality defined civilization. This is the world of the movie, told in the medium of cinematic art.

Music and natural sounds, such as the woodpecker, are key to the movie’s full experience. Sound both narrates for and orients the viewer with a gifted touch. It leads us into each new episode of Rajith’s odyssey. For instance, at the beginning, the pan on the fog-mantled mountain is so long we wonder if something went wrong in the projection room. Sorrowful, wistful flute music plays. Then scary sounds come in—charging hoof beats, screams, war whoops, as the cloud lifts off the mountain. This is the curtain going up on the stage; the show will begin. And with the flute followed by distant menace introduce us to the film’s deep contrast—sweet life and brutality.

Next, as if in response to the war whoops, Rajith drops likes an arrow from the sky into the sea, as if the victim of enemies. The scene cuts to a line of listless city police tapping their sticks, just waiting for a chance to use them. Back to the seascape, Rajith lies drenched on the shore, slowly rises, and begins climbing a cliff next to him. Slowly dim sounds of voices, war cries, guns, even cannons, rise in volume as we arrive to the next scene of city-street chaos, the wild looting of electronic shops, and the vicious beating of one youth. Rajith arrives in time to add his kicks to the beaten boy, showing us at the very beginning his primitive-man character. In no way do we ever like Rajith in this film, and yet, something in his slender-youth vulnerability and lack of a safe world, create a note of sympathy for him.

Frequently and ingeniously an ominous tension is created by the low, unchanging buzz of a tanpura or similar drone instrument. It faint noise transforms the utterly green landscape into a sinister place where heinous savagery, lurks in grasses and forests. This tanpura sound contrasts to the reoccurring flute. One other instrument plays a significant role, the lugubrious cello, whose periodic presence mourns senseless death and gore.

Finally, silence dominates the soundtrack, with bird chirps emphasizing the quiet. Any wrong move or manmade sound might lead to a hidden rebel shooting the perpetrator. No one is safe in that pregnant silence. And when the tanpura faintly buzzes underneath the silence, or horses whinny, the audience knows bad trouble is just ahead. What are the whistles we hear? Are they birds or signals between men hidden in the grasses?

Towards the end Rajith has his fortune told by an itinerant psychic with a green parrot. He will survive and all good things will befall him. Like the prince in the fisherman’s tale, Rajith somehow survives the massacre of the village men that happens next (though he dreamt it). He wanders in his confused state past the barbaric scene that shows no trace of itself. We hear and then see his brother’s wife calling for him, looking for him. The camera returns to the tree hollow of before and soon moves in to show Rajith’s shiny dark face inside.

Between Two Worlds saturates the viewer in both natural beauty and the primordial violence of mankind that go hand in hand, never to be separated. As in so many stories that show this, we once again leave the theater asking: What was the purpose of these lives?

For screening times visit the San Francisco International Film Festival http://fest10.sffs.org

© 2010 Gail Spilsbury, all rights reserved

Photo: www.sffs.org