'Forsaken Land' offers a sighting of a potentially
major new talent 'The Forsaken Land'.
Michael
Wilmington, Tribune movie critic Published September 1, 2006
An extraordinary debut film from Sri Lankan writer-director
Vimukthi Jayasundara, "The Forsaken Land," is a
stark, lyrical and affecting portrait of war's aftermath as
seen from the edges of the old conflict.
In images
that sear themselves into your memory, Jayasundara shows a
watchful young girl (Pumidika Sapurni Peiris), a young
soldier (Mahendra Perera), his faithless wife (Nilupili
Jayawardena) and devout unmarried sister (Kaushalya Fernando)
caught up in the events that follow a cease-fire between
rebels and the government.
Throughout, in barren
landscapes that are deliberately meant to evoke the absurdist
nightmares of Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett, the uneasy
peace seems as threatening as the preceding bloodshed.
Jayasundara's picture, which took the 2005 Cannes Film
Festival Camera d'Or for best first film (an award
previously won by Dennis Hopper and Spike Lee), is done with
sparse dialogue and haunting tableaux of the isolated rural
landscape.
"Land" has some of the strange
poetry of Ingmar Bergman's great 1968 anti-war film
"Shame," but it's a more cryptic, exotic work,
burningly immediate yet imbued with some of the quality of
timeless fable. Only 27, Jayasundara seems a moviemaker of
high promise.
"Forsaken Land," a work of
sophistication and cinematic eloquence, may signal the
arrival of a major international talent.
"Some
films offer up their mysteries openly; others, like the
quietly affecting Sri Lankan film "The Forsaken
Land," keep their secrets close, revealing them
gradually shot by shot, scene by scene." - New York
Times
"Beautiful but withholding...
[Jayasundara's] command of film language is evident and his
evocation of postwar trauma is haunting." - Village
Voice
"An extraordinary debut film... Forsaken
Land, a work of sophistication and cinematic eloquence, may
signal the arrival of a major international talent." -
Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune
"Jayasundara has an undeniable gift for painting
haunting images." -Time Out Chicago
Avant-
garde Storytelling Stunning Sri Lankan debut evokes Tarkovsky
BY STEVE ERICKSON Jayasundara is even more inclined towards
abstraction and revelling in nature's beauty than Tarkovsky,
but his tracking shots are similar. Almost every scene in
"The Forsaken Land" is comprised of just one shot.
Each one plays like a mini-feature, often ending in a
surprising place.
