As a premiere, Buddhi Vishvanath Keerthisena's film "Sihina Deshayen" certainly exhibits the Director's talent for cinematography. But when a film claims to handle issues as ambitious as "youth unrest, power politics, temporality and death", you also expect sensitive socio-political analysis. A social criticism of the production, however, exposes many drawbacks in the movie which is full of platitudes and stereotypes, including in its derogatory depiction of women.
Another Fifth Circuit movie. And another disappointment. The superb sense of cinematography in Buddhi Vishvanath Keerthisena's first film "Sihina Deshayen " is sadly overshadowed by a tendency towards stereotypes and dialogue full of platitudes. And if it is progressive, it is so only because of its explicit and unabashed portrayal of sexuality and, of course, the characters' liberal use of four letter words.
The story revolves around a young theatre group acting out the life and times of Ehelepola and Sri Wickrama Rajasingha. The main characters are three friends - Lenin, the Director of the play (who is a very aptly-named Marxist), Rajitha, an actor, and Vishva, a musician. The story of these young people unravels as the narration of an apparently omnipotent Charitha, the brother of the "decadent" Rajitha. Charitha is later to die in a bomb blast.
The film is full of a self-defeating modernism. The fragmentation of the episodes leaves it disjointed and incomprehensible, and a strand of symbolism that could have been very effective artistically, ends up entangled in this incomprehensibility.
The initial problem with the film is its inability to grapple with the issues it ostensibly sets out to handle. We are told in an ambitious prologue that the movie is about "youth unrest, power politics, temporality and death". The death of Charitha in a bomb blast is mentioned and then portrayed, and the death of an army officer, the brother of one of the actors, is also portrayed. And the movie opens with the news on the radio of the war in the North and East. So it is cast initially in the mould of a very political film, and leaves us with expectations of a "political" perspective of death, of war, and the meaningless destruction all around us. But finally, we are left with a film where farce eclipses serious political statement, and the "politics" of death is hardly dealt with. The half-comic, half portentous "devil" who appears invisibly on screen at rehearsals and in the lives of the actors, ultimately carry no tangible meaning.
The implications of the death of the army officer is never fully explored. And the death of Charitha, eventually, functions merely as an exposee of the ideology behind the story: Charitha is the explicitly nationalistic and stereotypical ideal of the Sinhala Buddhist male, and his death portends the doom of humankind. His character always appears in the (once more stereotypical) ideal rural backdrop that the decadent world of the urban artiste is pitted against. He becomes, then, the highly romanticized foil for the excesses of the city (and the artiste). He wears white, meditates by the tranquil village river, and engages in philosophical conversations with the village priest. Of course, virtue is not very strong in the modern world, and this is symbolized by Charitha's death in a bomb blast. So his death operates far more strongly as a vehicle for this utopian message than as a political statement about the bomb blast, a very pertinent question for the war-ravaged environment we live in today.
With a particular interest in the portrayal of women in film, what struck me the most was the absence of major female roles in the movie. For a film that claims to deal with weighty and all-encompassing issues, the absence of significant women characters is certainly conspicuous (Youth unrest here obviously means male youth unrest).
Strangely enough, the character played by Yasodha Wimaladharma, a "star" name in the Sinhala cinema, appeared only fleetingly at the very beginning. It is unfathomable that such "big names" are used for such minor roles. And the two women characters who do appear more than fleetingly are stereotypical in the most derogatory manner. No doubt they are portrayed as part of the decadent world of Vishva, Rajitha and Lenin, but even then, the women could have been given more flesh and blood, at least as much as the men had (and this is not saying much).
The two women are amoral, and after only one thing - sex. They are hardly given a voice, and only come on the scene as the sexual partners of the male characters. Surely there is more human feeling even in the most decadent of worlds.
The white woman, Vishva's girlfriend from New York, is typically stereotyped as the smoking, boozing western female out for the sex of the earthy brown man (Of course, the casting of a white woman here would have been politic as far as the Director is concerned, for cultural taboos pertaining to explicit sex scenes would have been less in operation for the white woman actor). Absolutely nothing but sexuality is present in the relationship between Vishva and the white girl. The first appearance of the woman is when she walks in, scantily clad, to Vishva's music room, and seduces him. When their liaison is on the rocks, they sit at a table eating luscious fruit, obviously a symbol of their sexual frustrations. For like most of the other characters in the movie, these two are not very articulate - except, of course, in the case of Vishva's acumen for four letter words.
The white woman's character is further defamed when, as soon as there is trouble brewing in her relationship with Vishva, she walks into Lenin's room with sexual innuendoes (Lenin, by the way, has initial qualms about sleeping with his friend's friend, which he is soon able to fight). Vishva, of course, has to walk in on one of their "escapades". The next morning, he tells the woman "we have to talk". We never see them talking. After all, they don't know how to.
Rajitha's married-woman-next-door is no less carnal. His daily peeks through the window and his nocturnal adventures are a veritable comedy, and sex, again, is the only motivating force ("A red dress in the clothes line means we meet at the station tomorrow morning"). Again, the woman hardly speaks.
Lenin the ardent Marxist for example is another stereotype character. His personality is hardly developed in the film, and he is full of nauseating Marxist platitudes (At a sumptuous caste party, he tells his friend Vishva: "We are eating like this, and half the world is starving, it is not fair"). Of course, his ideas become a joke to his other friends. What, after all, does he propose to do about this iniquitous distribution of resources?
The movie as a whole lacks well-rounded characterization, and it looks as if the characters are merely mouthpieces for various philosophies. For a theatre group, the young people lack personality and vibrancy, and the unprofessional script adds to the dead-pan effect of the movie. The English dialogue in particular appears as a series of platitudes and stilted conversations, and the acting could certainly have been improved.
Sadly a Director who had sub-titled the film in English for a foreign audience, failed to see the necessity to sub-title the English dialogue for the Sinhala audience, which is obviously the majority receiver of the movie. There is certainly hope for Keerthisena, but he should become a more acute observer of society.
“It’s a crazy idea!” was one of the kinder comments made by colleagues of Mr G. C. Wickremasinghe when, in September 1992, he proposed turning an abandoned tea factory into a hotel.
Wrickremasinghe, a director of Aitken Spence & Co. Ltd., had been visiting the company managed tea plantations of the Concordia group near Kandapola, a few miles from Nuwara Eliya. On the Hethersett plantation, at 6,7OO feet above sea level, he spied through the misty, tea clad landscape a tall, deserted tea factory crowning a hill. Described in the jargon of tea planters as a “silent” factory this place where the popular Hethersett mark of tea was originally produced, had been empty for nearly 20 years.
All the machinery had been removed, leaving only two huge engines that provided the factory with power, and a system of wheels at ceiling height which were rotated by belts to operate the tea rollers and graders. As Wickremasinghe stated in his proposal drafted on the spot while he toured the factory:
“It is a typical tea factory building of solid construction, having a ground floor plus four lofts.... the ground floor has windows all around and the windows appear to be in good condition. The height of the ceiling of the ground floor is about 14 feet. This is a very attractive height, giving an opportunity for an imaginative architect to tastefully design reception areas, dining room, etc.... “
Wickremasinghe’s extraordinary vision was matched by the talent of architect Nihal Bodhinayake and together they have created something unique that could become as famous as Kenya’s Treetops Hotel as an unusual place to stay. Treetops is renowned because of its location in typical safari country as well as for its innovative architecture.
The Tea Factory Hotel because it is in the heart of hill country plantations that yield the world’s best tea, and is unlike any other hotel anywhere in the world, could be a reason by itself for visiting Sri Lanka.
"I was advised not to call the hotel The Tea Factory,” said Wickremasinghe, “because European visitors might associate the word ‘factory’ with industrial pollution.” However, he persisted, inspired by the factory’s location astride healthy surroundings of hills and dales, instead of within the confines of a crowded city.
In his original proposal he pointed out: “the factory is located on a hillock with gorgeous views all around. On three sides we see undulating land with a beautiful cover of tea. On one side there is a gap where there is a view for several miles going right down to the area near Randenigala tank...."
It has taken nearly four years for the dream to become reality. When all the permits had been obtained, and a 99 year lease on the factory and 25 acres of land secured, work began on the conversion.
The approach to the Tea Factory is typical, along winding dusty roads carved out of the hillside with well maintained, close cropped tea bushes soaring skywards or plunging steeply to valleys below. In gullies between the hills, rivers of carefully tended vegetables Ñ leeks and potatoes seem to flow. Protected forests cap the hills and birdsong fills the air. At night wild boar rummage in the vegetable patches while mist steals over the mountains, emphasising the cosiness of the hotel’s snug interior.
While the exterior of the factory has not been changed and has the traditional corrugated iron walls, painted silver, and hundreds of tall casement windows, the interior is as unconventional as Wickremasinghe’s original idea.
Work was under way on the finishing touches when we visited last week. The dangling cables and busy carpenters could not dull the excitement of stepping into the hotel for the first time. It is thrilling. It has the appearance of a Disney like cartoon, a Heath Robinson fantasy, a childhood Meccano creation: something extraordinary has happened. The conversion is not simply a work of genius; it manages to stir responses forgotten over the years: the sheer delight of make believe.
There is in atrium beginning in the basement where strange engine, 50 years old, which once powered the factory, idles in retirement. Belts connect it to the wheels restored to rotate overhead in imitation of those days and nights when the factory produced nearly 5OO,OOOkgs of tea a year. The gaze is drawn irresistibly upwards to where two huge fans with wooden blades hang at opposite end of the atrium, a reminder of their use to induce warm air into the lofts during the withering of the green leaf.
Steel girders, as ceiling supports, painted dark green and rust red, are left uncovered, as are the wooden beams forming the framework of floors and ceilings. The frames of the casement windows are the original wood, the loft floors Ñ and ceilings Ñ are the original pine boards imported from England. Floors of the reception and restaurant areas are more recent, well polished timber from Australia.
The reception counter is on the right of the entrance and leads to a games room, bar and shop. On the left is the restaurant and bar, with a mobile of metal spoked wheels under a copper canopy as the buffet decor. An old, restored lift with iron grilled gate, and a wooden staircase, lead to the foue loft floors, now converted into bedrooms.
There are 57 rooms, including three suites built in the old tea lift shaft, with views on three sides of distant mountains. The rooms were still being furnished during our visit but the fixtures indicated a luxury in keeping with the boldness of the project.
Each room has a bath tub alongside windows affording a panoramic view of tea gardens. The washbasin is set in a counter of wood. In the bedroom, concertina doors of varnished wood open to a clothes closet; the bedhead and other fittings are of teak vinyl. There is an entrance also with a luggage bench.
Floors are carpeted with a double underlay both for comfort and also for soundproofing since the wooden floor of each room is the ceiling of the room below. Each room has an individual heater; there is central heating for the public areas.
At the foot of the hill on which the Tea Factory Hotel stands, is the village of Hethersett. It is a community of 1,500 people, many of them pensioners or engaged in vegetable cultivation. About 300 are employed in the Concordia group tea plantations and factories. I asked one old lady who had worked in the factory for 40 years before it was closed, what she thought of it being turned into a hotel. Did she think it was a crazy idea?
She smiled with the wisdom of age. “It’s good,” she said with a twinkle in her eyes. She was looking forward to the tea factory, silent no longer, again bringing prosperity and renown to Hethersett.
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