Sri Lankan director Prasanna Vithanage’s Paradise which opens on June 28,projects a multiplicity of cultural and political dynamics placed in one range of vision. It is up to us to see the narrative the way we want to see it.
On one level it is the trust-shattering journey of two strong Malayali individuals, Kesav and Ammu, in Sri Lanka, And this is as good a place as any to say Roshan Mathew and Darshana Rajendran, two of my most favourite young contemporary Malayali actors(or for that matter, actors from any part of the world), are irreproachably unerring in their roles.
On another level, Paradise(it should have actually been titled Paradise Lost) is a modern mythological parable, where Kesav and Ammu’s local host in Sri Lanka Andrew(Shyam Fernando) keeps improvising the Ramayan to suit his guests’ touristic yearnings.
When at the end , after a horrific crime is committed, Ammu asks Andrew, “Do you really what you said at the police station is really what happened?”
At the core, Paradise is about the “truth”, as we know it, as we interpret is, and as it actually is.At a little more than 90 minutes , Paradise is a slight film in terms of time and space. But in what it says in that time, this is a profoundly plangent portrait of loss of love trust and basic compassion.
It is also a deeply disturbing study of police atrocity. When a custodial death happens, all hell breaks loose…Or maybe that sounds too melodramatic for a film that favours quietude. What unfolds after Sargeant Bandara(Mahendra Parrera, completely in character) snuffs out a life for a robbery that the dead suspect had most likely not committed,is more Brechtian than anything we’ve seen lately.
Roshan Mathew is adept at portraying a man who doesn’t care how many eggs he breaks as long as he gets his omelette. Darshana’s Ammu is made of sterner stuff. She emerges an unlikely hero in a tale of two visitors in an island of turbulence.
The film is so mired in quiet excellence that no actor or technician allows his craft and skill to show. Rajeev Ravi shoots Sri Lanka without an eye for touristic detail. Sure, there are scenic shots of beautiful temples and waterfalls. But what Ravi’s lenses are looking for is the grime underneath. A lot of the scenes are shot in a guest house where every plate on the table tells story.
Veteran editor A Sreekar Prasad cuts the images in every frame painlessly. We never know when one emotional brush stroke ceases and another begins.As a storyteller writer-director Prasanna Vithanage creates a crescendo from scratch. The movement of plot , its mounting seamless tension is symphonic.
There is also an upstairs-downstairs metaphor hovering uneasily over the script. The staff and the bosses are never quite at peace with one another. We would never have known of the hierarchy until all hell breaks loose. Paradise provides us a glimpse of the darkness underneath the normal landscape . It is a strong and border-defying narrative, quiet and disturbing while telling us that those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones at those who live just outside.
Rating – **** (4/5)
