| The Rajpal Abeynayake Column By Rajpal Abeynayake | ||||||
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Lester - not necessarily in the afterglow of Cannes…
This sounds a tad funny, because Lester may have been forgotten in Cannes, but he is not forgotten in Sri Lanka -- which is in no way to belittle the Cannes honour. Pity that Cannes waited till Lester was eighty four to recognise him by screening a documentary about him, even though it is a fairly safe bet that a director with the same talents in the West would have been accorded similar honours much earlier in his life. It is also a pity that an award like Cannes is a prerequisite for putting any international director on the map. This is not to say that Lester was not known internationally before the Cannes people decided in their wisdom that he is worthy of their belated nod. Cannes of course has screened Lester before, but as an also ran in competition with other entries. But now perhaps, Lester James Peiris will be in that pantheon together with say Satyajit Rai and Akiro Kurosowa. What's needed about Lester is not a hagiography, but an assessment that would put the film making efforts of his and other Sri Lankan directors of any stature in some kind of perspective. By Lester, an era in Sri Lankan film can be defined -- and certainly no other director can aspire to that status in this country. He was no 'thani thatuven piyambanne' type of agent provocateur in the film world, but preferred the grand sweep, and working with trilogies that took in stirring transitions in Sri Lankan life, he became a reference point for documenting social upheaval. The name Lester evokes Gamperaliya, rather loosely if not insipidly translated by AFP as 'Changes in the Village.'' Anybody who has seen Gamperaliya will probably remember that Gamperaliya is in many ways about anything but 'changes in the village' - - even though certainly there were changes in that village that was depicted. Gamperaliya is about a transition, and one that perhaps anyone outside of Sri Lanka cannot quite relate to which may be another reason that Lester did not have the early resonance of say Rai or Kurosowa in the international film community. Film too is in transition, though perhaps not in such epic scales as society is - - and it is when talking of such transitions that I often hear the comment 'oh well, Lester is passe now.'' It is said in the same way that some talk about glorified artists who have big names, paint in bright colours but are now considered rich and idle has-beens ----as if they ever had been in the first place. Anybody who speaks of Lester in this manner has got to be a moron at least, if it cannot be put in more exacting terms, but of course the Cannes documentary too has described Lester as a 'film maker from another time.'' Chronologically speaking of course Lester is from another time, and surely as there are transitions as severe as Gamperaliya, there should be transitions such as those that place Lester in 'another time'' in the film world. But there is such as a thing as a body of work, and this is the favourite phrase of those who talk about say the Nobel Prize with some air of authority and élan. Apparently, the Nobel Prize for literature is awarded for a body of work, even though it has been awarded in the past on some occasions, for a single work of significance. In terms of a body of work in cinema, Lester is unmatched, and it is also not just the fact that he has a body of work but also that it is a well formed and cohesive body of work as opposed to one that is diffuse and disjointed. Now, this is not to say that Lester is a man for trilogies and transitions only, if anyone is running away with that idea, but he is also not the man who would make one film about a whore and another about a walauwa…, you know, in a manner of speaking. Some others talk as if there is nobody today in Sri Lankan cinema to take over from Lester as if any such thing is necessary and that somehow Lester will in some way be diminished if he does not leave either his carbon copy or at least an ambitious protégé behind. But that's all about being in different eras and if there won't be another Lester in this era, that is why this era is this era and not that era. Now however shoddy that might sound as a way of putting it, it is a way of saying that today's directors somehow seem not to work in that grand sweep. Theiy may be provocative to the point of burnout -- in the sense that any sequel might never be as powerful as the first one, thus not being very helpful in building up that all important cohesive body of work. But if that is the defining quality of Sri Lankan cinema in this era, be that as it may. Because, whereas there was one bright sun in the past that outshone other celestial bodies- Lester -- now there are several stars that illuminate the firmament, even though some people might find that to be another way of saying that it is all really very dark as night… |
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