Between Two Worlds

TIFF: Sri Lanka's civil conflict raged so furiously for twenty-six long years that when it was declared over, one of the main reactions was numb disbelief. Director Vimukthi Jayasundara last explored the hollow absurdities of his homeland's war in The Forsaken Land. Four years later, the fighting has stopped but the stark symbols of war are not so easily erased. Because Jayasundara is at heart a symbolist, Between Two Worlds never sets out to explain the conflict, but it does illuminate it.

A man washes up on the shore and makes his way into a rioting city. He rescues a foreign woman, and they begin travelling out to the hills. But instead of refuge, the countryside reveals increasing menace. What begins as enigmatic soon moves to unsettling, then descends into the stark stabs of violence particular to civil war.

Jayasundara is always alive to the unique nature of his setting. Shooting in widescreen compositions that show off the area's lush green vistas to sublime effect, he conjures up images that haunt this beauty – military helicopters sweeping over the landscape, a dog feasting on a cow. Here he expands and deepens the absurdist quality he brought to The Forsaken Land. Our protagonist witnesses a van plunge madly into a lake, but when he arrives at the shore, an old man swimming there insists the incident is ancient history. “It's possible you just saw something that happened a long time ago,” he says.

Jayasundara's Sri Lanka is a mythic place where war has collapsed the space between past and present, has militarized traditional rituals and, perhaps worst of all, has made the mute witnessing of horror an everyday act. What elevates his filmmaking from commentary to art is the sophistication of his symbolism and his fluid, graceful articulation of pain.

--Cameron Bailey

Vimukthi Jayasundara was born in Ratnapura, Sri Lanka, and studied at the Film and Television Institute in Pune, India. His earlier work includes the short documentary The Land of Silence (01) and the short film Empty for Love (02), which screened at more than fifty film festivals worldwide. His debut feature, The Forsaken Land (05), won the Camera d'Or Ex-aequo at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival for best debut film. Between Two Worlds (09) is his latest film.
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Larry Richman: This afternoon I headed up Yonge Street to the AMC 3 for the North American Premiere of Between Two Worlds and took my seat early -- as it turned out, this wasn't an extremely popular selection. But I love foreign films and Sri Lanka is about as exotic as it gets. It's also common for there to be empty seats mid-fest as films go into second showings. I was also enjoying fresh popcorn for the first time this year -- picked it up earlier at Scotiabank where they have cool toppings like ketchup, dill, and free faux butter.

This one is a real puzzle, as director Vimukthi Jayasundara pointed out in the intro to the screening. I never quite solved it, though. The film is more an examination of the consequences of war than anything else -- in this case the bloody decades-long civil war in Sri Lanka. Several storylines that don't necessarily intersect give the viewer plenty to ponder. But the strength of Between Two Worlds is its lush cinematography. The stark contrast between the gorgeous landscape and the brutality being inflicted by man against man is disturbing.