I have had a fondness for the Gal Enna Bindala song from the Sinhabahu play since childhood. I don't believe I have watched the play, but once upon a time when I was just a kid and my parents were still youthful, my mother may have liked this play and spoken about it to us. That may have been the deciding factor for me to have made up my mind to go and watch this movie on a Sunday morning.
I was pleasantly surprised at the depth of the story of Sinhabahu and felt happy this was made into a movie so that it becomes more accessible for people like me who watch Netflix and YouTube.
I like to think the late Saraschandra would have dipped into the well of the colonial Buddhist and that the story is in fact an investigation on moral relativism in a time the country was being transformed by the hands of the colonists. But since this would have been controversial he may have instead used the period of transformation the country went through at the hands of the Indian conquerors as a facade to tell the story. I comprehended the scenes like the breaking down of the len dhora (cave door) by the Sinhabahu and the instructions by the Sinhaya on constructing the fence to keep the animals away as metaphor. Where the former represents the indignation the young feel in their immaturity towards immortality of the conquerors. And if the step taken out of indignation is a step taken out of place from the grand narrative it can bring you pain.
The dialogue was witty and the fact that it was done in an almost forgotten Sinhalese dialect is mentally stimulating. The filmography and the locations were great. I thought the actors and actresses did a great job except in one scene where the Sinhaya actor says that a crown should not be given even to the son of the king if the son is not of sound mind. The actor may have drawn a little too hard from personal conviction when he delivered this line. I found this displeasing because I suspect a false narrative is being fed to certain demographics in Sri Lanka and that it is the responsibility of those who are playing frontline jobs in the media to be ethical and just. Case and point, I walked into the movie theater half an hour early, I bought my ticket and left the theater to get a coffee. 25 minutes later when I got back to the theater, I am stopped at the security checkpoint and the guard shoves me, restricts my movements and tells another guard, "deveni parata enna" as if a double is walking around tarnishing my name using my rapport like the plot of many a western pieces of fiction.
