seen Sunday 10th December:

SANKARA
[4+?/10] : Sri Lanka 2006  : Prasanna JAYAKODY : 85m
Sankara provided me with one of the most unpleasant experiences I've ever endured in a cinema, but by the end I couldn't say with confidence how much this was my own fault and how much was the fault of the film itself. The story of a Buddhist monk who arrives at a rural village to restore some old, perhaps ancient, religious paintings, it unfolds at such a slow pace that for pretty much the entirety of its length I found myself struggling to stay awake. The rolling of the credits, and the opportunity to breathe the December Estonian air, was thus a blessed relief.
   And yet, I do reckon director Jayakody has talent - and wouldn't be at all surprised were he to be hailed as a new-found master as his film makes the round of the world's film festivals (as far as I can ascertain, Estonia is only its second foreign venue, Cairo having been the first).
   Though Sankara is clearly a low-budget enterprise, filmed on digital video, many of its images are strikingly beautiful: the enigmatic opening credits grab the attention, spur the curiosity, whet the appetite. And in the basic terms of its story, Sankara is intriguing: taking British cinema as a (perhaps arbitrary) reference-point, it could be read as a cross between two Powell & Pressburger classics from the 1940s.
   As in Black Narcissus, an ascetic, celibate, self-denying religious temperament endures fleshly temptations in a quasi-subcontinental setting (with major differences of geography - the foothills of the Himalayas rather than the flatlands of Sri Lanka) - both films feature a free-standing bell-and-rope structure which proves a key visual component to several scenes.
   And as in P&P's A Canterbury Tale, an element of "whodunnit" drama adds an extra element of drama to more elevated mystical/metaphysical concerns. The nocturnal crime in Sankara is one of vandalism, as the monk's efforts are complicated and extended when a hair-pin is used to etch a long horizontal line across the middle of the murals he has so painstakingly restored.
   Suspects include the hairpin's owner, a flirtatious young beauty who takes a particular interest in the serious-minded monk and his work; the monk himself (who may perhaps feel a wish to linger a little longer in this unusual situation); and a man of similar age and appearance who arrived with him on the same transport, and observes events from the sidelines.
   This unnamed individual keeps cropping up, but never speaks, is never spoken to, or acknowledged in any way. Perhaps he is a figment of someone's imagination; perhaps he's somehow a projection of the secular potential latent in the monk; perhaps he's just a nosey parker. The identity of this man, indeed the identity of the hairpin-wielding vandal, remains a mystery. Instead of a conventional Poirot-style denouement, Sankara concludes on a typically tantalising note - with a long sequence in which the camera closely examines the murals, very much in the manner of how Tarkovsky ended Andrei Rublev.
   With the Tarkovsky film, the viewer is by this stage in little doubt as to the director's remarkable skills. Sankara is harder to assess. On balance, I'd say that Prayakody has many gifts but storytelling and pacing come a long way down the list. My difficulties in engaging with, and staying awake during, Sankara, were perhaps due in no small part to my own fatigue. But in retrospect I'm tempted to conclude that the film itself didn't help much: it's distinctive, mysterious, executed with a careful determination that many may find intoxicating. But it's also static, mannered and quite excruciatingly ponderous.

Neil Young

nb : timing is from film-festival catalogue.

seen at KuMu [Eesti Kunstmuseum / Estonia Art Museum] (public show; paid 75 EEK).

PÖFF POSTSCRIPT : Videotheque viewings
The Bet Collector (Philippines) : 5+?/10
Isolated (Spain) : 6+?/10
Man Exposed (Finland) : 7+?/10
The Wedding Chest (France/Russia/Kyrgyzstan) : 6?/10