Funny Boy

You like it or hate it... the director is an international fame and loved her other works esp Water which was also nominated for Oscar ....this movie is based on a book by Shyam Selvadurai.. it is a coming-of-age story of a boy in 1970s Sri Lanka amidst uprisings, tensions between Tamils and Sinhalese, ethnic riots... although, author stated that it is not really his biography but it does appear as his personal narrative when I read about him.. but disappointed with the middle-of-the-road and 1980s style direction, performances are average too... a multitask watch...

Prolific Indian filmmaker Deepa Mehta's latest achievement is a tender coming of age gay story with a strong political backdrop. Set in late 70's-early 80's it depicts the horrors of racial prejudice against members of a Tamil community in the awakening of the civil war in Sri Lanka. The narrative focuses on the development and sexual arise of a young boy, who since his early ages demonstrates his interest in the feminine universe, as well as a courageous expressiveness of his true personality. As a kid he battled bullying in school and prejudice at home, while his parents are engaged in the political conflicts; as a young man he discovered the fascination of American/British pop culture, while developing his first romance with a lonely richer boy; As the crisis intensifies and most of his community are threatened and attacked, they plan a escape to Canada, interfering somehow in the boy's sudden process of figuring out his identity and place in the world. The director unveils social, political, gender and cultural issues seen through Arjie's boyhood and varied experiences with a world he doesn't belong to. It's only at the moments of intimacy and entertainment provided by his encounters with his boyfriend, and the acceptance found on his aunt's approach that bring him a sense of ease. Canada's Official entry for the Best International Film at the 2021 Oscars, Mehta composes an affecting, lively and free-spirited, historically accurate and family-friendly LGBTQ tale.

I am so happy and pleased and proud to see a movie like this filmed in Sri Lanka and on Netflix!!! I hope this film starts conversations and I hope and pray for that change and justice come to the LGBT community in Sri Lanka. I hate racism and homophobia so much.

Arjun is Tamil boy who realises he's gay in a country that criminalises people like him. The movie follows his life from childhood to young manhood, set in Sri Lanka during the ethnic war that resulted in somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 deaths, and one million Tamils migrating to India, Canada, and other countries. The story is one damn thing after another. The messiness, almost incoherence of the script, mimics this, but also distances us from the characters, who become objects moved around by events that they don't and can't control. Arjun's relationship with Shean doesn't free either of them, it's at best a brief time of mutual joy which can't resist the politics surrounding it. The acting is uniformly very good, helping us Westerners understand a culture so different and yet oddly similar to our own. I get the impression that Mehta had a clear vision of what she wanted, and it wasn't a neatly structured plot tied up with a neat bow of a resolution. I think she also wanted to show how avoiding politics is no defence. The movie was engaging despite itself, the kind that tosses up half-recalled scenes when you least expect them. Worth watching, even if only to get a vague notion of what it's like to live in a different society than your own. I read a number of attacks on this movie, all of which focused on two points, and which all betrayed that the critics had political axes to grind. Pity.

I want to deal with one of the criticisms of the film right away. I do not speak any of the languages of the sub continent at all and wouldn't recognise the difference between Sinhalese or Tamil to save my life. Therefore the poor-quality spoken dialogue from the non-Tamil actors playing members of that ethnic group was something I obviously never picked up on. OK, I'd be furious if I was watching a German film and, say, Swedish people were speaking poor German and pretending to be that nationality. But as I was in no position to pick up on this here, it didn't detract from my enjoyment of the film.

I always enjoy films that combine personal dramas and stories with sweeping political and societal events. Here we had them all in spades. Family dynamics, prejudices in both the domestic sphere and the national arena, differing viewpoints on how to deal with inter-community strife.

Within a country whose idyllic existence is slowly being rent apart by ethnic tensions, a wealthy family lives these problems in microcosm. The plot outline on IMDB contains many spoilers but I am not going to be so crass. The film concentrates on two periods, first of all in 1974 when Arjie is a child interested in dressing up as a girl with a protective auntie encouraging him and his parents attempting to get him to "man up". We see the prejudices that occurred even then between Sinhalese and Tamils. And Aunty Radha forced to depart for Canada because of them.

Then we follow Arjie in his teenage years when prejudice is turning into hatred between communities. He is caught up in this in both his love life and with his family whose patriarch wrongly thought their position in society would protect them.

It's a part of history I knew about, but not in detail. I have looked it up since and can see that, although there is not a clear political context in the film, the major issues and events seem to be true. I was mesmerised throughout and fascinated by both the wider and the personal stories. I'm so glad I saw this film.