THE DRAMATIC PREMISE

Finding the dramatic premise of the film story is important to me. This gives my plot a firm foundation. It is one major guiding principle in my search for truth through the film medium. It also informs any sub-plots I might introduce. This is important to me because I now know that I compromised on this in my first film.

While developing that script with Sanath Gunathileke and conducting further research about the true story on which it was loosely based, I learnt something about the lead female character. She lived her life from day to day and detested women who desired marriage, a home, children and all the other trapping of mundane living. She didn't believe you can love one person all your life - she saw every relationship between a man and a woman as circumstantial and not permanent. But this changes when she meets the lead male character. She falls in love with him. She becomes possessive and begins to desire all the things she once detested. It is the tragedy that unfolds as a result of this conformity that lies at the heart of ice on fire.

I think in all my films so far I have tried to portray the mediocrity of everyday conventional living and how conformity to societal rules can hinder a person's search for happiness and the truth about herself or herself. At the time I was preparing to make ice on fire I was also getting ready to marry. In my heart there was certain hesitancy and questioning. Will marriage cage me? Will it hinder me? These personal doubts helped me in developing the script and identifying with my characters.

If there is one underlying idea or conceptual process in every aspect of my film work, I would like to call it the "inside out" process - be it in the writer, the director, and the actors. What one sees and hears on the screen should not be just the surface nature of people and situations. What goes on below the surface emotionally, psychologically, the whole social context of human living - should be what is felt by the viewer. This should be true of even the landscape shot and even when an actor is inactive or sitting still - as Joe Abeywickrama is in many of the scenes in Death on a Full Moon Day.

In my second film Dark Night of the Soul, the premise was the idea of a man trying to redeem himself from the wrong he had committed in the past. I got this theme from Tolstoy's last novel Resurrection. Again a personal experience helped me develop the central character and draw on the 'inside out' process when directing the actor. Before my marriage, I had an affair with a distant relative. I broke it off when I got involved with the theatre - I did not respond to her letters , I refused to meet her again . This made me feel guilty and it remained with me for some time.

When I was asked to direct my third film walls within, Tony Ranasinghe's first dramatic script started the story from the characters childhood. The part, which interested me, the return of the former lover, happened in the middle of the script. For me this was the handle I could use, the dramatic premise which made the story. So we worked on the script intensely and as you know the film now starts with the reappearance of the lover. Continue