Rani: The road not taken
View(s):Many, many years ago, a slightly dubious but otherwise excellent Belgian theatre director by the name of Rudi Corens put on the boards what is probably one of the oldest plays in the world. The Libation Bearers by Aeschylus, is a powerful reflection on a mother’s anguish and vengeance over the loss of her child. Ironically, Dr Manorani Saravanamuttu gave a brilliant performance as the grieving Queen Clytemnestra. Richard de Zoysa, her son, played the role of the regicide Aegisthus. Four decades on, her long-drawn-out howl of grief on stage has stayed with me as much as the granite resolve and iron-willed control, she perhaps inflicted on herself in response to her son’s murder.
Asoka Handagama’s film ‘Rani’, a purported work of fiction, which carefully follows the details and people around Richard’s death and Manorani’s life thereafter, is deeply dissatisfying for several reasons. And for those who knew them intimately or socially or professionally, the characterisation and portrayal appear shallow bordering on silly, coarse to the point of cruelty.
But this is a work of fiction says the director – and it is a trifle unfair to impose on or compete with his version of a fiction, with our lived experiences. But leaving aside the film’s inability to reproduce the lived realities of those who knew his protagonists, Handagama’s ‘Rani’ is a letdown for other reasons.
If we look at Art as a thing that offers us a way of thinking, examining and exploring realities rather than reproducing a truth, the Manorani-Richard story offers multiple points of departure for this exercise. Sri Lankan film has had a long and habitual preoccupation with class. The idea of decaying or decadent old money vs the energy and optimism of those without, is a leitmotif. In an inversion of that narrative, we have in Richard, the brilliant scion of two prominent elite families, whose personal charm and social capital effortlessly opened every door, but whose social justice quotient propelled him away from power, influence and money and drew him to becoming a class traitor in a conflict of brutal savagery.
The journalistic and creative writing Richard de Zoysa left behind, signposted his growing cynicism and anger towards the UNP regime of the time with perfect clarity. His growing involvement with the JVP of ’89, the when, how and the why, would make for a fascinating fictitious exploration. And no doubt Manorani and Richard had those dark, circumspect, conversations in their own shorthand. What would Manorani have made of it all? Alas the imagination of Handagama’s fiction chooses to circumvent that great opportunity.
The film opens with Manorani speaking to reporters at the mortuary after identifying the body of her son. She says she is the luckiest of mothers to have found her son’s body when so many other mothers never did. Manorani, with her striking looks, regal demeanour and indomitable will, offers a compelling dramatic vessel, at once a tragic heroine and wounded physician, through which to explore the geography of that searing common grief so rampant in North and South of this country for so long. Once again, the imagination of Handagama’s fiction chooses to circumvent the issue, opting instead for the easy optics of alcohol as a false proxy.
Perhaps the only point of authenticity in the film is Manorani’s reaction to the death of Premadasa. Her anger at herself for her barely concealed satisfaction at the poetic justice of his death, is brought out masterly by Ms. Mallawarachchi.
The film focuses on Manorani’s stepping up to give leadership to the Mothers’ Front Movement. As an outstanding and compassionate doctor at her clinic, she did more than her share of grief counselling. As a consummate performer how did she embrace this new role? How did she impact the lives of those mothers grieving in anonymous desperation? What counsel did she offer? Did she validate the grief of the other mothers at those many meetings just by her presence? What impact did it have on her own processes of grief? How did her ethnicity play into the endeavour? Handagama’s loose meandering plot carefully avoids these vital realities, reducing the movement to a tool of the Mahinda-Mangala political machine.
But Handagama’s sins of omission are mild compared to his one grave sin of commission. By characterizing Richard’s killers as a bunch of drunk policemen acting on impulse, he is falling back on the standard position of the state when it came to grave violations of human rights – the bad apples theory. Yes, rights violations do take place but they are attributed to a few random bad apples acting on their own, outside the remit of the state. In doing so he absolves the state and the entire chain of command that ordered Richard’s killing, of systematic planning and specific intent.
Richard taught me English Literature, we acted together in plays, briefly I worked for him. There was always the need to know for certain exactly what happened. Over the years I asked many people I came across – journalists and activists – who ordered the hit? One name kept coming up – that of Ranjan Wijeratne (a fellow old Thomian – Thomian fratricide – another unsung grand tradition). And it stands to reason – given Lalith’s and Manorani’s connection, only Wijeratne had sufficient operational command to have ordered the hit.
At the tail end of the failing insurrection was Richard high enough in the JVP to warrant the hit? Or was he collateral damage in the Lalith-Premadasa feud hinted at in the film? The decision was made by one man in the chain of command.
Having avoided many realities and truths that could have been explored, Handagama’s final disservice to the truth of Manorani and Richard, is to create the fiction that Richard’s murder was a random act by alcohol-fuelled cops eager to please their master.
- Dylan Perera
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