‘AKSHARAYA’ REVISITED
When Asoka Handagama’s film “Aksharaya” came out in 2005, some detractors claimed it was not relevant to our ‘culture’. But a quick glimpse at today’s headlines on numerous cases of child abuse, one can safely assume that Handagama’s film was not only relevant, but prophetic. When Vittorio De Sica released “Umberto D” (1952) in Post-War Italy, the then government undersecretary Giulio Andreotti accused De Sica of “washing dirty linen in public”.
“Umberto D” is now considered a Neo-Realist classic; an important film that brazenly captured the cultural, economic and political disillusionment of a nation. Likewise “Aksharaya” was released at a delicate time, when maintaining our international ‘image’ was a top priority, and the film’s bleak psychosexual themes no doubt made many people nervous.
The fact that the film’s point was muddied was no fault of the director— any accusations that it is structurally “loose” has no basis whatsoever, in fact the film merits repeated viewings to fully appreciate its layered motifs (Dr. Ruwan Jayatunge analyzed the Freudian Oedipal themes in his conclusive article “Psychoanalytical Notions of Aksharaya”). Interestingly the film’s English title is “Letter of Fire”—when inquired as to the significance of the title, Handagama stated in an interview (back in 2006) that “these kinds of traumatic experiences [in the film] cannot be interpreted by language but can only be inscribed in letters of fire”, an idea which he attributes to French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Indeed, the three main characters are all traumatized in some way; their sexual vagaries are a collective effort—shown in the ‘rape ritual’ performed by the mother and father at the start of the film, which is seen by their son who knows the ‘script’ of this reenactment by heart.
The burden of past traumas and how they shape the present is symbolically illustrated in a later scene, where the mother has a confrontation with a security-guard at the National Museum (Colombo). During the confrontation, the mother hysterically breaks all the relics in the room, and ultimately ends up having sex with the guard. This maybe her first extramarital encounter, and her resulting ‘freedom’ is metaphorically signified by the broken relics around her—in her own words, the ‘weight’ (or traumas) of the past have been shattered. The opening credit sequence sets the tone for this gritty subject matter; even though the background music is buoyant, we sense something is wrong as the boy is meticulously measured by his mother. Note the inspired chiaroscuro lighting in this sequence— the interplay between light, shadow and colour evokes the quality of a Renaissance painting (cinematographer Channa Deshapriya also photographed Vimukthi Jayasundara’s awardwinning film “The Forsaken Land”).
Lester James Peries’s “Rekhawa” was a commercial failure locally during its release in 1956, even though it was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Fed on South Indian formula movies, the audience just wasn’t ready for the film. Similarly, Handagama tread unprecedented territory with “Aksharaya”, and the resultant controversy is merely history repeating itself.