That’s the road the man took us through. It is a road that has been stalled midway, in the name of the art house. And a road we need to return to. Right now
“Trash doesn’t belong to the academic tradition, and that’s part of the fun of trash—you know (or should know) that you don’t have to take it seriously, that it was never meant to be anymore than frivolous and trifling and entertaining.” (Pauline Kael)
- The man triumphed, I think: in his ability to make us forget everything that preceded what we were seeing
- Directors like Perera come out of a certain milieu
- Perera’s movies never had such plots: where they promised to parse and get together logically was exactly where they detoured
From his debut to his finale, K. A. W. Perera lived for nearly 45 years and gave us more than 25 films.
None of them impressed critics, and none of them were meant to, but they enraptured audiences and made them come back for more in ways no other filmmaker could hope to match.
I have a neighbour who swears by the artifice of Janaka saha Manju, and her son, a close friend of mine, makes it a point to tell me that it always moves him and her to tears.
I tried for a long time to cry at Janaka saha Manju; I found out that I could not, and I found out that in certain sequences I would burst out laughing.
One way to equate the work that came out of this social subset is by equating it to kitsch, or trashy art
But that’s where the catch was: even in the most banally conceived scenes, Perera targeted a specific subset in our society who had been missed out by other mainstream filmmakers, and along the way transformed the unreality of his stories to the tears, laughs, and sobs and smiles he compelled from them.
There’s something about an artist like K. A. W. Perera that intrigues me. Their awareness of the shortcomings of their own craft – the inept performances, the crude scripts, the bizarre finales and culminations and revelations – is more often than not compensated for by their urge to tell a story that enchants. Nothing sustains interest in a filmgoer, after all, than a plot that parses.
But Perera’s movies never had such plots: where they promised to parse and get together logically was exactly where they detoured, and sometimes wildly, to subplots and storylines that neither made sense nor were really essential to the larger narrative.
Janaka saha Manju is, in that respect, not really about Janaka and Manju, rather a ton of other stories and subplots that somehow keep us entertained in the crudest way possible.
But that’s where the man triumphed, I think: in his ability to make us forget everything that preceded what we were seeing and everything that followed what we just saw.
Directors like Perera come out of a certain milieu, and Perera fitted that milieu perfectly. One way to equate the work that came out of this social subset is by equating it to kitsch, or trashy art, the sort that fulfilled the most rudimentary function of any art: keep audiences fixed to their seats. The man who gave us Janaka saha Manju never intrigued us, nor was he a born craftsman, but he was a teller or tales, and our society, even more than neighbouring societies, was filled with the milieu he happened to come from, which happened to be the same milieu that demanded, more than anything else, that what they were watching, reading, and listening to was basically first and foremost a story.
So what of his own story?
Koddul Arachchige Perera was born in 1915 in Colombo. His mother, Kavinihamy Ratnayake, privileged his education so much that she got him admitted to Ananda College, back then a repository of Buddhist education. Ananda wasn’t far off, but nor was it nearby, so young Perera had to go by bus every day and spend 25 cents on the ride.
From an early age, however, he was an ardent consumer of bioscope, the peepshow, which meant that he had to save money for the occasional jaunt to the theatre. His parents didn’t really approve of this, and weren’t ready to give him pocket money for the purpose, so he eventually struck a plan: he would go to school by foot, saving the 25 cents in such a way that he would be able to spend the fare on movie tickets.
Owing to his mother’s strictness, however, he did not neglect his studies: in the end, he passed the Junior School Certificate. What happened next could have come out straight from one of his films: while studying at a private institute to prepare himself for the University Entrance Examination, he met a girl called Agnes whom he befriended and became a lover of, the problem being that the romance was never sanctioned by his parents. Since he disobeyed them and went ahead, and since they cut him off from the family, he had to face a dwindling financial situation which he tried to evade by finding a job through the Employment Exchange. On his first attempt, however, he was rejected; on his way back home, he was called to the Exchange by an official who had happened to be one of his teachers at Ananda. Eventually, he was hired as a clerk at the Education Department.
Ananda had given him a sound knowledge of the local arts, including the local theatre. Perera had quickly become a lover of drama, and while at the Department he wrote scripts for Radio Ceylon. His radio plays soon picked up and became popular with audiences, one of whom happened to be the Director of the Department.
Perusing his qualifications, that Director appointed Perera as an Assistant English Teacher at a school in Biyanwala.
There’s something about an artist like K. A. W. Perera that intrigues me. Their awareness of the shortcomings of their own craft
Four years later, though, he was out of the teaching profession and in Radio Ceylon, as a full time writer and copywriter. His penchant for written dialogues which were, for their time, down to earth, got him the attention of Lester James Peries, who, fresh out of the Government Film Unit, recruited him as the dialogues writer for Sri Lanka’s first genuinely conceived film, Rekava. He later wound up as the dialogues writer for Peries’s next film, Sandeshaya, after which he co-directed his debut, Pirimiyek Nisa, with T. Somasekaran, in 1960 and under the patronage of E. A. P. Edirisinghe. Senasuma Kothanada, a love story which featured the likes of Gamini Fonseka and Jeevarani Kurukulasuriya and which introduced Premasiri Khemadasa to the world of film music, was an overnight sensation when it was first released in 1966. Naturally enough, Perera waded on unhindered, with Kapatikama, Bicycle Hora, Penawa Neda, Kathuru Muwath, Seeye Nottuwa, Lokuma Hinawa, Ihatha Athmaya, Aparadaya saha Danduwama, and Lasanda.
After Lasanda (in 1975), he gave his most phenomenally successful work: Duleeka, Wasana (Geetha Kumarasinghe’s debut), Nedeyo (where he introduced Vijaya Nandasiri to the cinema), and of course Janaka saha Manju. They don’t come like that anymore. Then again, they never could.
With some of the most telling titles any director here could conjure up (who else, after all, could have gone for such intriguing tags like Bangali Walalu or Wathura Karaththaya today? – forget Jungi Hora, which isn’t intriguing, only nauseating), he congealed into the most plebeian filmmaker Sri Lanka could claim. That was part of his magic and charm. And in the end, that magic and charm, despised by the critic, won everyone who patronised them, especially on account of the repertory of actors he went for: Upali Attanayake, Sonia Dissanayake, Joe Abeywickrama, and his own son, Jayantha Das Perera.
I talked with Jayantha some time back and I asked him to explain what it was that made up his father’s penchant for the box office.
“For one thing,” Jayantha replied, “He had a way with his actors, more particularly his leading actors: Gamini, Vijaya, Joe, Upali, and Ravindra, to name just five. When I was in Janaka saha Manju, he didn’t see me as his son, but as Janaka.
“I remember I had to in one scene embrace and kiss Gothami Pathiraja, who played Manju. At that age I suppose I was a little wary of embracing women in such a crude way, because I distinctly remember my father, forgetting all propriety for one moment, shouting at me ‘Don’t you know how to kiss a woman?’ No, he wasn’t angry there. He was being sardonic. Frank. I think that’s what came through his work. And I think that’s what grabbed audiences back then.” “Grab” is an understatement. For some time I couldn’t understand what it was in Janaka saha Manju which demanded tears, but then it occurred to me: even those who wring their hands and sniff at it understand that the world they look at, the characters resident in it, and the storylines that colour it, are patently false. And yet they cry, not because they are deceiving themselves, but because they know that beneath the fissures of Janaka saha Manju, there’s something that goes beyond the unreality of its experience and worldview.
By making us forget that unreality, Perera transformed our disbelief into emotion.
His was a world we were afraid to tread beyond the projector: a world which, like in Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo, we went to observe and would swoon if ever it intruded on ours. In the end that became his magic touch, and he became a Midas: of the rough, unrefined sort perhaps, but a Midas nevertheless. That has got to be reason why his movies always made money.
When we watch Deveni Inima today, and cringe at the unpredictability and unreality of the plotlines in it, we are guilty of being repressed puritans. When we read Sujeewa Prasanaarachchi’s novels and cringe at the melodramatic overtones of his romances, again we are guilty. This is not because we’re pretentiously high-and-mighty, but because we think that the stories which run riot in them don’t exist, when in fact they do: I’ve come across schoolboys and schoolgirls who deceive half the world, the way the schoolboys and schoolgirls resident in Deveni Inima and Prasanaarachchi’s novels do, into thinking that they AREN’T in love.
When I watch Janaka saha Manju, therefore, my disbelief at the incredulity of its plot is tempered, thankfully, by my realisation that this is what those who flocked in droves to see it back when it was released wanted: a sugar-coated variant on the lives they drew themselves to, which they would do anything to have.
The testosterone-laden adolescents who croon Sanuka Wickramasinghe, watch Deveni Inima, and impress their lovers with their voices, are really no different to the people we saw, and wanted to become, in one of K. A. W. Perera’s tearjerkers. That’s the road the man took us through. It is a road that has been stalled midway, in the name of the art house. And a road we need to return to. Right now.
