චන්දරේ කොහෙද දැන් අපි යන්නේ...? ON THE RUN පාර දිගේ ] April 26, 9.15 pm, Jade 2 After One League Of Sky, I returned to my urban films with On The Run (1977) and Old Soldier (1981). Ajith Thilakasena, one of the greatest short story writers of our time, wrote the script for On The Run. Unfortunately, it is not a much-discussed film. But it is one of my favourites. What I like about On The Run is that it takes a hackneyed family theme, woman getting pregnant and resolves it outside the family, within the crowds of the city, in a hostel for working women and unemployed youth. It works with displacement but without much sadness for that loss of rootedness. The two or three main characters in On The Run are displaced people, displaced from the villages, alienated from their families and eking out a life in the margins of the city. On The Run undertakes the destruction of the nation most fully and unromantically. In that sense it was rather prescient. If Lester James Periess films are about the emerging nation, the bourgeois nation, On The Run creates a structure for the deconstruction of the nation, through both a surreal and a fragmented discourse of the family. It is also a very funny film, funny because it asks irreverent questions about family, marriage, romance and reproduction. Both the family and nation are treated parodically. There is pathos, but fragmented and cut-up into episodic bits. The sequencing of a phenomenological apprehension of reality is countered by a visual commentary. It subverts story telling itself. I still do not understand why those who welcomed One League Of Sky did not appreciate the realities of On The Run. People did not want to confront those truths about life, about romance, about its leaders. None of my films have been, with the exception of Coming Of Age (Eya Den Loku Lamayek, 1977), commercial successes. But On The Run did not win any acclaim even from the critics. It was not even among the top 10 of the films selected for the Presidential Awards for that year. But in my reckoning it was one of my best films. It has begun to be noticed only now. People have said that On The Run is a film made before its time. That may be a compliment in its own way. But if critics did not like it at that time, it is not because it was ahead of its time. I dont think any product can be called as such. It also has to do with dulling our senses with too much artiness. Today, a lot of arty films get made, pretentious; but also conservative and conformist. We must somehow try to break through that kind of mind set. It is dangerous to set paradigms and models to judge films by. It is a good film only if it conforms to some notion and standards; we must move on from that thinking once and for all and look at new ways of reading film. On The Run at that time and even now will not conform to any formula for the arty film or the alternative, unfortunately. But fortunately too. It is not stuffy. ~ Dharmasena Pathiraja ~
Posted on: Fri, 28 Nov 2014 06:39:13 +0000