By Carlo Fonseka - The Island
Feeling a little exhausted by grappling with the impossible challenge of pursuing the vision of ‘mathata thitha’, and being overwhelmed by the non-stop mega-doses of religion administered through the media during the past few days, I sought relief from it all by going with my family to see Udayakantha Warnasuriya’s latest film called: Challenges. Having returned home from the cinema and by inner compulsion took up my pen to write this before I get to sleep. Let me say at once that my family felt greatly invigorated by the experience of seeing the film. I am addressing this memo to kindred spirits among readers of The Island who may not have seen the film. I do so because it was drummed into me on mother’s knee that I should share good things with my brothers and friends (Note: I had no sisters.) In this consumerist age, the enjoyment of the visual and performing arts is one activity which is not a zero-sum game, i.e. an activity in which if I get more you necessarily get less. For when it comes to the enjoyment of the arts, my total enjoyment of a film or song or poem or painting does not diminish your total enjoyment of them. That is one reason why we should encourage the enjoyment of the arts by our children challenged by the struggle for existence in this consumerist expensive society.
moreMaster of film art
But as I was saying, all members of my family thoroughly enjoyed the film, severally and jointly. As most Sinhala films do, there is something for everyone in this film: fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, grandparents and grandchildren, girlfriends and boyfriends, friends and rivals, whoever. UW is surely a master of the art and craft of film. He takes credit for the brilliant concept, the racy dialogues, the arresting screenplay and imaginative direction of Challenges. As all artistic works should, the film entertains and delights us through and through. It is out and out secular in outlook. It is aesthetically pleasing. It illuminates the current state of upper middle-class Sri Lankan family life in a provocative way. If you believe that art should imitate life this film does so to a nicety. If you think that every good artiste must communicate something wholesome to the public through their work, UW transmits the best and the highest human feelings naturally, unobtrusively, effectively and with good humor literally.
Alcohol and tobacco
As Chairman of the National Authority Tobacco and Alcohol, I greatly admire the effective way in which the principal character in UW’s film—a self-opinionated professorial father—taught his teenage son that alcohol has an awful taste and that the sham happiness it is suppose to bring is bought at the price of much physical, mental and social harm. What is more, I didn’t spot a single young person foolish enough to parade their self-importance by sporting a cigarette. The film communicates the value of fair-play, honesty and healthy rivalry in the struggle for existence in the human world in sharp contrast to ‘Nature red in tooth and claw’. UW packs all of this plus some enthralling modern music and songs into the film which basically depicts the ordinary round of daily life of flamboyant, rumbustious teenagers in rude health.
Father-Son Bond
UW has woven into the fabric of the story of the film the theme of the modern father-son bond which is no less emotionally enriching than the father-son bond celebrated in Sarathchandra’s play Sinhabahu. (Remember in Sinhabahu the son finally kills his father! So much for the enduring value of the Sinhala father-son bond) In UW’s film, the son coyly discusses problems of love and marriage with his father, which some theoreticians of pristine Sinhala culture think could, would or should never happen. UW has dexterously incorporated into his film nearly all the ages sketched by Shakespeare in As You Like It. The only age not depicted is the ‘mewling and puking’ infant. But the bulk of the film is devoted to portraying the biological preliminaries that the members in the reproductive age group of Homo sapiens, one of the 193 living species of monkeys and apes, are programmed to go through before they produce mewling and puking infants.
The Players
The players in Challenges, both veterans and novices are all wonderful. The non-smoking, non-drinking, vegetarian Roshan Ranawaka is so dashing and fresh and full of life, that all teenagers should imitate his lifestyle. Of the veterans, Lucky Dias the somewhat pedantic professor pulled off his role so confidently, so convincingly and with such consummate skill, that were I still in active university service he would surely have served as the artistic model for me to imitate. After all, we happen to live in times when it seems better for life to imitate art than for art to imitate life. As D.H. Lawrence famously said, the ‘essential function of art is moral’.
