Asandhimitta’s last hurrah
Reviewed by Somasiri Munasinghe
Asoka Handagama’s latest film Asandhimitta is an insanely fragmented, patchy mind of a woman who may or may not be a psychopath.
The dark movie begins with a woman telephoning a film director, who is an old friend, asking him to make a movie about her at the same time confessing that she is involved in three homicides. What follows is a series of vignettes, accompanied by edgy characters who do not seem to be what they really pretend to be.
The best comparison to the film can be drawn from the novel Appachchi Avith (Father has Come) written by Saman Wickramarachchi whose Asandhimitta was adopted by Handagama for the film. Appachchi Avith’which won the prestigious literary award Swarna Pushthaka last year is an equally dark, tragic tale of a man who imagines his dead father has come back home.
There is hardly any difference between the two protagonists. Asandhimitta, is a 300-pound fleshy marvel, a divorced mother of two boys whose real identity remains a mystery. The character is shaped by what people believe her to be and people in her life are what she perceives them to be.
Enter the smooth-talking trickster Vicky (Dharmapriya Dias) into Asandhi’s life, bent on making a fast buck utilizing his grand get-rich-quick ploys through her: A kovil dedicated to Ma Kali attracting a whole village to solve their problems by divine means and a fake social organisation trying to hoodwink the gullible. In reality, people have become millionaires by such scams in modern Sri Lanka.
The film director (Shyam Fernando) who is trying to unearth Asandhi’s real life story and connect the fragments is the only sane voice echoing through the film, but he too falls prey to his own fears at the end. His wife (Yashoda Wimaladharma) who is vary of her husband’s obsession with the film project, manipulates his fear to rush him home to a surprise birthday party. The only characters rooted in reality are in the director’s family; everything else is a hazy blur between reality and fiction.
Asandhi smiles and gestures to the camera often inviting the director to weave a tale sympathetic to her and her struggle to survive in a world running out of sympathy. She is a woman obsessed with a death wish planning to make a grand exit famously before the eyes of the men who cheated on her, and seek the ultimate vengeance from a world that pushed her to a corner with no hope of return. The final scene of her laughing insanely while being pushed to the gallows is the last hurrah of her life.
Handagama works with wonderful non-professional actors in all his films and casting of Nilmini Sigera, an alluring TV anchor of yesteryear still retaining her charm and cuteness despite her 300 -pound bulk, speaks volume for the directors’ unerring casting eye.
She is a first-time film actress who won the Most Brilliant Performer Award at the Osaka Asian Film Festival. Shyam Fernando, as the film director and W.A. Jayasiri, playing the role of former boyfriend of Asandhi, excel in their characters. Jayasiri exists and reappears providing the mystery with refreshing twists. Both these actors started their careers on stage.
Dharmapriya Dias, a stage actor who made his debut in Machan plays the character of Vicky, Asandhi’s accidental boyfriend with an evil fascination for her.
The characters of two sisters and their wheel chair-bound mother who is waiting with a gun to shoot the man who married her eldest daughter and abused the other, speaks volumes for Handagama’s magic. Stage veteran Anula Bulathsinhala reminds me very much of Somalatha Subasinghe’s character in Tissa Abeysekera’s Maha Gedera while the two fidgety sisters give the film an eerie edge. Particularly the divorced elder sister (Gayani Gisanthika) with a creepy charm is worthy of special mention.
The three family members can be the three murder victims that Asandhi is talking about. The only clue of violence we are shown is in Vicky’s mime as if he was going to strangle the vengeful old woman.
Kapila Poogalarachchi’s music is evocative of the grim mood of the tale but the funny thing is many people has not paid attention to its music as everybody was probably engrossed in what was unfolding on the screen.
In a video shot at the premiere of the film in a Colombo theatre I saw Sri Lankan-born writer Shyam Selvadurai walking into the theatre. Nobody seemed to notice the Canadian icon who could have been cornered for a brief interview about the film. But, Selvadurai, author of Funny Boy and Cinnamon Gardens, did not forget to leave a comment, in appreciation of Handagama’s ninth feature film.
“The unreliability of the film’s richly developed characters, the intriguing and eerie element of magic realism along with surprising plot twists, create a rich tapestry,” he commented. According to him Asandhimitta is Handagama’s best movie to date. I agree with him.
