The Line of Destiny

This was my second insight into Lester James Peries filmography with the first being, Baddegama (1980). I have just seen it once, many years back but I still remember it with fascination. The girl saving the deer sequence, local mysticism, the villagers conflict, shots of the wildlife and the devil in the climax. While having some similar elements, Rekava (1956) is considered his best work and I wanted to share my thoughts on this masterpiece. At that time when Sinalese cinema was confined to melodrama, following a regular formula, replete with over-the-top antics and over emphasis on spectacles and stars. Lester despised sing along and reversed the trend, he created Rekava which portrayed reality from an aesthetic perspective. The film made international headlines, unfortunately not recognised in its time as it usually happens with all great art masterpiece. Anyway, it was a real relief from the duplicate distributed from the gaudy sets of popular melodramatic Indian movies at the time. The majority of Indian parallel cinema had only one thing to do, marketing and overselling poverty for the sake of realism and film festival awards. Also, I feel Lester received much less critical attention than his Indian contemporaries.

Rekava shared all the regular ingredients with the popular cinema - like the emphasis on family values, melodrama, series of song-and-dance sequences. But the difference with Lester was his artistic vision comprised of strong humanism and visual lyricism that can be experienced in the climax of the film. Overall, I recommend it to anyone who are willing to explore Sinalese cinema and wants something more than yet another melodrama from the past.