{"id":163522,"date":"2016-06-06T16:10:59","date_gmt":"2016-06-06T10:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=163522"},"modified":"2016-06-11T05:19:13","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T23:49:13","slug":"let-her-cry-just-another-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/let-her-cry-just-another-review\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Let Her Cry\u2019 \u2013 Just Another Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Uditha Devapriya<\/span><\/a> –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Uditha<\/a>

Uditha Devapriya<\/p><\/div>\n

I know a teacher who offers comments about our cinema from time to time. Just the other day we were talking about Asoka Handagama<\/span><\/a>. He hadn\u2019t seen \u201cLet Her Cry<\/span><\/a>\u201d, which was previewed to the media a month back and given a limited release at Regal some weeks ago, but based on what I told him about the film (without any spoilers, of course), he gave his two cents on the man. It all amounted to this: Handagama can\u2019t be forced to conform. If you watch a film of his, you watch it the way he wants you to. And if there are any complaints about the way he\u2019s directed it, too bad.<\/p>\n

He also observed that Handagama likes to dabble in ellipsis. Every film of his contains elliptical narratives, which is another way of saying that they aren\u2019t easy to figure out in advance. His characters do not act in a preconceived way. They exist and persist, they cry, break apart, and express outrage so unpredictably that you don\u2019t know what\u2019s coming next. On one level this works beautifully \u2013 that is why I enjoyed \u201cChanda Kinnari\u201d, particularly the exchanges between Swarna Mallawarachchi\u2019s character and her neighbours \u2013 but sometimes he overdoes it. I\u2019m not belittling him, of course, because after all that\u2019s the \u201cHandagama touch\u201d. Without it, none of his films would actually work.<\/p>\n

\"Asoka<\/a>

Asoka Handagama<\/p><\/div>\n

Vageesha Sumanasekara\u2019s take on \u201cLet Her Cry\u201d (published in Groundviews) lambasts the film for basically not being political enough. He indulges in postmodernism to explain his reaction to the film. Liyanage Amarakeerthi, on the other hand, has (in an article published in \u201cThe Island\u201d) taken the opposite position and praised it as a \u201cmasterly crafted work of art\u201d (to his credit he discusses the film as a film, which Sumanasekara doesn\u2019t do). I don\u2019t pretend to know a fraction of what these two people do, so I won\u2019t take sides yet. This isn\u2019t an analysis, hence, but just another review.<\/p>\n

To start things off, I admit \u201cLet Her Cry\u201d isn\u2019t a masterpiece. I\u2019m not saying this because it\u2019s crap, but because to pretend otherwise won\u2019t do Handagama himself any justice. Those I\u2019ve talked with about the film (not critics, but ordinary filmgoers) seem to have thought that it betrayed the director\u2019s lack of patience. They pointed at the last few scenes which culminate in that drive to house of our main three characters (a drive which opened the film as well, incidentally), and claimed that they were too quickly edited to offer reflection. Normally I\u2019d disagree with them, but this time I can\u2019t. For the truth of the matter is, \u201cLet Her Cry\u201d ends up making a personal statement that would have worked if the director hadn\u2019t conceived of it as a socio-political dissertation in that final sequence. I\u2019ll come back to this later.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, here\u2019s what I liked about the film. I liked the acting. And not just that of Swarna Mallawarachchi, whose return to the cinema after more than a decade no doubt warrants more than a customary clap. What Swarna does in this film, I assume, is extend the kind of performances she\u2019s been churning out for the last 50 years and transform herself into a motherly figure. We see a photo of her by her bed, taken at the prime of her career no doubt, and this pops up as a reminder of how she\u2019s gone away from depicting the \u201ctortured woman\u201d and embraced a matriarchal image.\"6\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That this works, and that she doesn\u2019t disappoint (not even in those incongruous sequences I\u2019ll talk about shortly), isn\u2019t surprising. Case in point: she looks at the girl who\u2019s flirting about with her husband, asks her candidly about her mother, and when she realises the mother\u2019s dead, she offers sympathy and hints at her innocence. The girl is not put off though: she opens her body to her and tells her defiantly that she\u2019s still very much nubile. Swarna\u2019s reaction? She looks calmly at her and whispers \u201cWretched whore!\u201d to her face. \u201cVintage Swarna,\u201d I thought to myself.<\/p>\n

Out of the other three actors I think I liked Rithika Kodithuwakku the best. As the student who falls for the Professor (Swarna\u2019s husband), Rithika\u2019s character is neither condemnable nor empathetic (which could be said of pretty much all the women resident in Handagama\u2019s films). She jars at some points. As she should, one can add. The way she fantasises about her love for the Professor, the way she intrudes into his life, and the way she brings in meaning to his family, are all spelt out for the viewer. I\u2019ve been told that this is her first performance. For the life of me, I didn\u2019t or rather couldn\u2019t notice that.<\/p>\n

I liked Sandali Ash as the Professor\u2019s daughter, if at all because she depicts the change in her character with effortless sensitivity. We\u2019re supposed to realise that she\u2019s alienated, spending time watching TV and occasionally raising conversation, but when she shifts gears (for no rhyme or reason, which is what makes it more appealing) and takes to religion, we are made to feel her change so swiftly that it doesn\u2019t jar. Not one bit. I wish I could say the same of Dhritiman Chatterjee (as the Professor), though, who dishes out a solid, but not quite as complex, performance.<\/p>\n

So yes, as far as acting goes, I liked the film. But good acting doesn\u2019t translate into a great film. Not all the time.<\/p>\n

And here we come to the film\u2019s problems. Handagama tries out two things with his plots: make the audience aware of the political and social in them while making them as elliptical and non-linear as he can. This unusual combination \u2013 which sometimes works and sometimes doesn\u2019t \u2013 is what comes out in \u201cLet Her Cry\u201d in almost every sequence, and for very obvious reasons, that takes away the audience\u2019s interest. That interest isn\u2019t going to be sustained by the use of another typical Handagama trademark: to pinpoint nearly everything in the plot as symbols and metaphors, defined at the outset and forced on us. These don’t always appear contrived (which is a good thing), but that doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re completely free from contrivance either.<\/p>\n

That beach sequence, for instance, in which Rithika\u2019s character goes out of the Professor\u2019s car, walks towards the sea, and phones the Professor (who\u2019s still in the car behind her), works almost theatrically to convince us that there\u2019s some metaphysical gulf between the two of them. The problem here isn\u2019t that we fail to see any meaning, but that we\u2019re somehow meant to embrace and affirm it for its face-value. In other words, it is that meaning which precedes content, and hence that preconceived meaning which contrives that particular sequence. Starkly.<\/p>\n

This is theatrical because, like all symbols meant for the stage and not cinema, it\u2019s so self-conscious and \u201cout-there\u201d that Handagama might as well have previewed it to audiences with subtitles. Incidentally, the same could be said of his depiction of religion (the shrine room by the stairway), the static exchange of words between father and daughter every evening (\u201cHi,\u201d he tells her, as he drops something \u2013 a chocolate bar, for instance \u2013 on her lap as she\u2019s watching TV: \u201cHi,\u201d she replies, not even looking at him), and that visual motif of the camera moving back as Swarna walks towards her husband in his room every time he returns from work. All these play out like a ritual.<\/p>\n

And not for no reason: at one level, Handagama is attributing to them a false sense of routine, of life playing out in order, before Rithika intrudes into the Professor\u2019s life. Which isn\u2019t to say that when she moves in, Handagama doesn\u2019t let go of his urge to portray everything as symbols and motifs: on one occasion, for instance, that girl has trouble unlocking the front door of her lover\u2019s house to leave it, which I suppose is meant to indicate how metaphysically bonded she has become to it. (I didn\u2019t know it was that hard to open a door and I didn\u2019t know how she could have found it hard to open the door when she came through it just a few minutes back.)<\/p>\n

So yes, in case you\u2019re wondering, all these appear contrived. What\u2019s worse is that sometimes they appear unintentionally obfuscated as well, as with that sequence of the Professor\u2019s daughter attempting suicide on the railway and being saved by Rithika. I know we\u2019re meant to be taken in by that scene, but the result of it is that, with all that quick cutting and music, we look away on account of its (over the top) suddenness and lack of clarity.<\/p>\n

That final sequence, while we\u2019re at it, merits more than a passing glance. What the director does in it is bring together both the social and the personal, which works at one level but then (as is typical of such sequences from his films) teeters off to histrionics and emotional outbursts which do not, to my mind, do justice to the message he\u2019s encouraging us to interpret. He could have toned down, in other words.<\/p>\n

I suppose \u201cLet Her Cry\u201d will leave much for those existentialist-critics to ponder on. As with \u201cAksharaya\u201d, his other film based in the urban upper-class, here too he\u2019s opted to concentrate his themes within one family. I doubt, however, that the ordinary cinemagoer will consider the message that Handagama\u2019s bringing up. Not because they\u2019re against that message, not because they\u2019re puritans who\u2019ll tag the \u201cindecent\u201d label on the film, but because he makes us think that he can\u2019t move beyond the personal without recourse to symbol and metaphor.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think \u201cLet Her Cry\u201d isn\u2019t political, and anyway, even if it wasn\u2019t, I don\u2019t think that calls for censure: after all, there\u2019s enough in Handagama\u2019s films that merit attention. On that basis I disagree with Vageesha Sumanasekara. But it\u2019s not a masterpiece either, and so I disagree with Professor Amarakeerthi. Masterpieces are coherent and free from ideological obscurity. What I see in this film is nothing but incoherence and obscurity, redeemed only at some points but not enough to make us raise enough questions about life, love, loss, and (yes) sex.<\/p>\n

I guess we should note here that while the theme of sexuality has been examined again and again by nearly every independent filmmaker here, none can quite match the way Handagama does it. The best excuse anyone can give for not understanding his films properly, therefore, is that the audience is beneath their subtext.<\/p>\n

The problem with \u201cLet Her Cry\u201d is that such an excuse isn\u2019t plausible. When I see that film, I remember Pauline Kael\u2019s review of Antonioni\u2019s \u201cBlow-Up\u201d, in which she cautioned against films and stories which were so ideologically preconceived and metaphoric that to not comprehend them was supposed to show that you had philistine, unrefined tastes.<\/p>\n

True, Handagama is no Antonioni and Antonioni\u2019s film was overrated in many respects, but I believe Kael\u2019s words ring true now for one reason: critics are raving over \u201cLet Her Cry\u201d. They\u2019re using almost every adjective in the dictionary to call it a masterpiece. This unfortunate trend of praising films which expect much from the audience and give little to nothing back to them isn\u2019t recent and will not go away anytime soon. Handagama\u2019s film is stark evidence of that fact. Kael\u2019s own words \u2013 \u201cThey feel they understand \u2018Blow-Up\u2019 but when they can\u2019t explain it, or why they feel as they do, they use that as the grounds for saying the movie is a work of art\u201d \u2013 might as well be applied to certain serious films made here, on that count.<\/p>\n

So I repeat what I wrote before. \u201cLet Her Cry\u201d isn\u2019t for the ordinary filmgoer. But then, what serious film from here is nowadays? I detest the way some filmmakers prey on \u201chigher\u201d tastes and leave the common audience in the dark, and thankfully Handagama isn\u2019t one of them. Nonetheless, \u201cLet Her Cry\u201d isn\u2019t what I\u2019d have expected from the man who gave us \u201cIni Avan\u201d four years ago. Not that this is surprising. Handagama, after all, has a tendency to examine his themes brutally and frankly while filling them with abstractions which aren\u2019t easy to align with the narrative. He overdid this many years ago (which is why \u201cAksharaya\u201d remains his weakest film), and seeing his latest, I left the hall with an unanswered question: hasn\u2019t he learnt his lesson yet?<\/p>\n

*Uditha Devapriya is a freelance writer who can be contacted at udakdev1@gmail.com His articles can be accessed at fragmenteyes.blogspot.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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