Young film maker Prasanna Jayakody shows maturity and guts in his third film, ’28’, a socially-relevant road movie of rare brilliance.
A woman who is thought to be in Dubai, found raped and murdered in Colombo and her husband Abasiri (Mahendra Perera) and his nephew Mani (Rukmal Nirosh) rush to bring the body to her village. Abasiri has not seen his wife Suddhi (Semini Iddamalgoda) in 15 years after she ran away. She leaves the village after becoming the object of ridicule for daring to bathe naked in the bathroom. The man who leaks the happenings behind closed door is none other than her peeping tom father-in-law Ukku Banda (Daya Tennekone).
The dead woman, through her monologues, relates what happens since the honeymoon night on the noisy bed while ‘men boozed and aunts squashed mosquitoes near her window within hearing distance’ and what they did later on a mattress laid on the floor ‘like two street drama actors’. We also come to know what she did in Colombo and scant details of her roommates who survive by working as sex workers, and particularly of her friend Kusume ‘who turns to any side men ask her to turn’.
We see a woman bargaining with a driver while Abasiri and his nephew are trying to find a vehicle to transport Suddhi’s body to Elahara, her village. One man is making an appointment with a woman on his cellphone while peeing in a darkened corner of a Colombo backstreet. What we see is the underbelly of the capital devoid of giant sky scrapers and posh tourist hotels.
The film begins with a list of inauspicious postures and actions a woman is supposed to avoid, read aloud by nephew Mani, extracting guffaws from his uncle who is working the gem mines underground. “No lip kissing or scratching of arm, don’t stick out the tongue, no untying and retying of the dress, no sitting and standing in a way to bare private parts, no scratching, no sleeping at odd hours, don’t stand with legs stride and no baring of the navel.” The list of 30 dont’s could be from a Sinhala translation of Kama Sutra.
Mahendra Perera, as down and out hero Abasiri, shows why he has evolved into a powerhouse of talent over the years. I remember meeting him for a media interview in the early 80s, his early days. He was young, full of promise and out of the Bollywood mould with ability to cross boundaries.
When the uncle and nephew rush to Colombo general hospital the doctors are on strike and there is no coroner or police. The duo tricked a van driver saying that they are taking an empty coffin to their village. Though the driver wonders the purpose of taking an empty coffin that far, agrees at the end as they were ready to pay a hefty Rs.10,000.
Rest of the road movie is how they take Suddhi’s body on the roof of a rickety ice cream van to her native village and what happens on the way. The three men have to retrieve the coffin after it falls off the van, sliding to a stream gushing down a mountain ravine. The upcountry landscape is washed out and dull, capturing the grim funereal mood of the gripping drama. The backdrop is bleak like their miserable lives, quite in contrast to Jayantha Chandrasiri’s romantic misty lush green in Samanala Sandhawaniya. That film was about how the elite loves. ’28’ is how the struggling majority does it.
What does ’28’ mean? The director has explained in an interview that 28 days is the menstruation cycle of a woman but, curiously, if you add the digits of the registration number of the van the total amounts to 28 – 38 SRI 1583. SRI, incidentally, has caused bloodshed and lot of deaths in the country though it is not even a letter in our alphabet.
The van is steered along perilous mountain roads by a driver called Lenin (Sarath Kothalawela). Several times he threatens to offload the coffin after he comes to know about the morbid cargo, but carries on anyway. After the real identity of Suddhi is revealed his attitude changes, developing an empathy towards the dead woman and her working class husband. Is he a man who sought the comfort of Suddhi or a good samaritan who wants to help someone like him in a society insensitive to human suffering?
It is on the undertaker’s embalming table that Abasiri observes the nakedness of his wife for the first time. Her perfume which he dabs on his fingers after finding the vial in her handbag keeps his past alive. The body is kept in the mortuary along with other dead women. One is killed after being raped, one body of a teen girl was dumped by the roadside and the other two belong to a mother and daughter who were burnt alive in a house. The latter obviously relates to a real life incident that took place in Kahawaththe a few years ago.
According to the UN, 30 percent to 40 percent of women in Sri Lanka suffer some kind of abuse, while more than 60 percent are victims of domestic violence.
When a gang of boys hoots at the coffin being carried on the van Abasiri shouts, “There is a woman like your mother in this coffin. First hoot at your mothers and then come to hoot at this woman,” echoing the Bible parable about casting the first stone.
His nephew asks: “How can this death trouble us uncle? Haven’t we faced bigger calamities in life?” Suddhi comes back in a broken box and her father-in-law stands facing the west with his back to us near the bathroom where she bathed naked, with the sound of water still flowing.
Flawless rhythm of the grim, tragic drama and terrific acting makes ’28’, directed by a young visionary, a modern landmark in the tiny Sinhala film industry. – Somasiri Munasinghe
