INI
AVAN: AN EXAMPLE OF THE IMPORTANCE OF SELF-REFLEXIVITY AND THE (DANGEROUS)
POWER OF ART
The question of how to effectively engage
with issues such as peace, justice and reconciliation is one that is proving
both urgent and controversial in post-conflict Sri Lanka. Perhaps unsurprising,
but definitely unfortunate there exist currently very few spaces for free and
open debate. Where debate does occur it is often in the context of intense
social divisions, strong hostility towards a perceived hypocrisy in
international human rights and a national community which has experienced
trauma, suffering and loss on all sides.
With this in mind I welcomed the recent
invitation I received to participate in a film screening programme in eastern
Sri Lanka. Having attended the programme before, I was pleasantly surprised by
the open discussion and intelligent debate the films – dealing with a wide
range of topics and from all over the world – generated. On this occasion I was
also keen to see the film being shown: IniAvan.
I had heard of Handagama’s reputation as a leading Sri Lankan film-maker and
the topic - one man’s efforts to rebuild his life following rehabilitation as
an ex-LTTE cadre – struck me as both an important and interesting one. Sadly I
and the audience were to be deeply disappointed by what we saw (so much so that
at least one participant went home angry enough to write his own review!). In
what follows I would like to explain why I think this is a problematic film
that requires us to reflect critically and deeply on the role that art and
artists play in reconciliation and social justice processes.
For a start, I must state upfront that I
reject any claim that a work of art can stand outside of its political or
social context. This is even more so when the piece is not even attempting to
disguise the particular location, people and time period it is seeking to
represent. When dealing with current and highly sensitive issues it has to be the responsibility of the
painter, poet, dramatist or film-maker to represent these with the utmost care
and attention. It is this care that I found tragically lacking in IniAvan.
The film is extremely specific in terms of
the characters and setting: the protagonist is an ex-LTTE cadre returning to
his community in Jaffna following the rehabilitation process. He is met with
distrust and even open hostility by fellow villagers. This, combined with
difficulties finding work lead to him becoming involved in smuggling
activities. We discover that those involved are men formerly known to him from
his life as an LTTE cadre. Meanwhile, having rescued his childhood sweetheart
from the social isolation of her life as a young widow (forcibly married to a
man much older than her to avoid being recruited by the LTTE), his path becomes
entwined with another woman: the abused wife of the security guard whose job he
takes. With such subject matter it is understandable one would expect a very
serious film.
However, while all of the issues raised are
very serious and real, the film-making style fast becomes more reminiscent of
mainstream south Asian cinema with highly stereotypical imagery (the violated
young widow running in her wedding sari) and incongruously comical scenes (the
opening bus ride, which also drags on for an excruciatingly long time). As one
audience member put it: ‘it is not real nor surreal, which makes it
unreal!’. Meanwhile another astute
member of the audience asked: what – if any – research did the film-maker do
with the community he sought to portray? Certainly the audience – who were
themselves from war affected communities, including a few from Jaffna – felt
that the portrayal was more how the film-maker imagined the situation in the North of the country to be than a
reflection of anything they recognised as their lived experiences.
This has the potential to begin a debate
about whether an ‘outsider’ can ever accurately represent a community they
study, observe or portray. This is not the argument I wish to make. Certainly
as a foreigner doing research in Sri Lanka it would be highly hypocritical of
me to suggest this was the case. I also believe that an outside perspective can
be useful: sometimes we see more clearly when we are outside of our own ‘common
sense’ world. However I will say that as an outsider I am extremely conscious
of how I may be misreading or misrepresenting what I think I understand. It is
this self-reflexivity that I find lacking in Handagama’s film. As a Sinhalese
director making a film populated almost entirely with Tamil characters (I will
return to the few Sinhalese characters later), I was left wondering what
Handagama was seeking to achieve. From an artistic point of view, how did he go
about crafting these characters: how did he imagine their inner-lives, their
dreams, their feelings, their aspirations and their sorrows? From a social and
political point of view, how did he expect his film would be received and
contribute to the highly charged public discourse on the war and its aftermath?
For a start, I found Handagama’s female characters
passive rather pathetic figures onto which all the exploitation and suffering
traditionally associated with women in (and out of) war was cast. As a feminist
activist and scholar I do not disagree with any of the issues he raises: the
stigma of widowhood, caste discrimination, domestic violence, the horrors of
displacement and the ongoing vulnerability to exploitation many women in
conflict and post-conflict settings face. Rather, it is the way he portrays the issues that I find
problematic. His female characters are simply not full people. They have no
agency and very little personality. This
is in stark contrast to the many women I have met – both here in Sri Lanka and
other post-conflict settings – who despite all the barriers, challenges and suffering
they face display a remarkable resilience, strength and determination. The aim
here is not to get into a war of representation: what does ‘the realTamil woman’s experience’ look like.
It is instead a challenge to film-makers like Handagama and others to carefully
reflect on whether their characters are in fact more than two-dimensional
caricatures of emblematic figures. In a film like IniAvan this is important not only from the point of view of making
a sophisticated and powerful film, it also has very real significance for how
the public debate will come to terms with the legacies of three decades of war,
the challenge of building a sustainably peaceful future and (maybe) addressing
the root causes of the conflict in the first place.
It is not only in relation to his female
characters that I find Handagama’s film troubling. Given the ongoing – albeit
understandable – fragility of the relationship between Sinhalese and Tamil
communities in Sri Lanka (I say understandable as both sides have experienced
terrible suffering and the inevitable polarisation that occurs through war and
the accompanying militaristic, nationalist propaganda produced both sides), it
is puzzling to me why Handagama would not only not reflect on this in the film but in fact decide to cast the
‘friendly truck-driver’ offering assistance to the protagonist as Sinhalese
while all the sources of conflict and suffering (the employer, abusive husband,
hostile villagers, thugs) are Tamil. In doing so he not only opens himself up
to accusations – which some of our audience made – of reinforcing Sinhalese
nationalist propaganda, he misses an opportunity to explore one of the most
important issues facing Sri Lankan society. It was also puzzling to me that
there was so little commentary in the film on the protagonist’s experience of
rehabilitation. While he seemed traumatised by some of his earlier associations
with the LTTE he seems to have been completely unaffected by the end of the war
and his interactions with the State. It may be his experience was entirely
positive but one would expect it to at least in some way be reflected upon in
the film, given that his return from rehabilitation is a pivotal feature of the
story. Indeed we know virtually nothing of the protagonist’s views and his motivations
and feelings are largely superficial.
If Handagama did not wish to contribute to
current social and political debate with this film then he should have avoided
entering such dangerous terrain. If his aim was to simply tell a story then he
should not have so explicitly set it in such a highly charged context. In
choosing to construct a story around such politicised figures as rehabilitated
ex-cadres, Tamil war widows and refugees and Jaffna community members Handagama
lost his right to abdicate political responsibility. This political
responsibility should weigh heavily on him. If he was trying to make a
beautiful film, he failed and in the process he did a disservice to the
suffering of a community that has a lot of healing to do and a reconciliation
process which will take a long long time if more nuance and sensitivity is not
shown to how we go about imagining and representing the Other.
Dr. Kiran Grewal
