SAIFF 2010: Between Two Worlds (2009) Review
Between Two Worlds will be screening as part of the South Asian International Film Festival on Sunday, October 31, at 10:00PM. You can find further details here.
Vimukthi Jayasundara's Between Two Worlds is a mystical film. I say this without value added to the word "mystical." This Sri Lankan production isa movie of mysticism and of the primal, but I'l l be damned if I could tell you what it's about. The festival notes for the movie seem to struggle with the same problem:
The young man has fallen from the sky. The lines of communication are burned. To flee the city and its tumult, get back to nature. Enter into another story. Of the legend of the prince. In the hope of a love.
To hide in the hollow of the tree. Nothing magical is improbable. What happened yesterday can reoccur tomorrow.
The synopsis is honest: an unnamed man (Kaushalaya Fernando) does fall from the sky into the sea, only climb a wall and walk into the middle of some kind of urban civil war. The first 20 minutes or so are almost completely without dialog--just a series of events, leading to the man getting a ride from the city into the countryside. The man is quiet, for the most part, and doesn't seem to have any clearly definable emotions. He wanders for a bit before an interlude with two fishermen introduce us to the story of a long-lost prince seeking his throne, and it's implied that this is who our lead might be.
This is borne out by later scenes which, at least in part, mirror elements from the story, but don't really resolve into any kind of theme. The constant report of gunfire can be heard in the distance, and the man seems to be on the run from it, but it's not clear if he thinks he's being pursued of if he's just afraid. He commits two acts of violence--murder--that we later see never happened.
Much of the movie is like this--elliptical to the point of frustration. This world and this man never cohere into anything other than pieces of an unfinished myth, told by two bored fishermen by the sea. It's beautiful to look at--at times, stunningly so. But there are so many barriers between the audience and the film that it's unclear what the intent was. Looking back at my experience watching it, I'm not sure if that's simply an observation or a criticism given how unclear the filmmaker's goals were in the making of this movie. Each movie should be judged based what it set out to do, but I'm not sure I know what the road map was for Between Two Worlds.
