Of Music and Solidarity: Sons and Fathers by Sumathy Sivamohan

Growing up in Colombo, Sri Lanka, I went to the cinema for the first time in the year 2000. The film Saroja, directed by Somaratne Dissanayake, was being screened. With two children becoming friends in spite of their ethnic, religious and language barriers as Sinhala and Tamil citizens of Sri Lanka, the film perhaps introduced the Civil War to many like me who were born in the 1990s. While several Sri Lankan films after Saroja have touched upon ideas of ethnic solidarity during the war, they continued to disappoint as there was rarely a coming-of-age story being told with curiosity and nuance. Feature films released after the 2000s tended to focus on ethnic solidarity from a Sinhala nationalist perspective with retellings of ancient legends and kingdoms in the hopes of attracting audiences.

In 2017, twenty-seven years after Saroja, filmmaker Sumathy Sivamohan attempted a unique approach to cinematic storytelling related to the war. Sons and Fathers is part of Sivamohan’s inspirational repertoire of independent films made over many years amidst government censorship and excessive control of the film industry in Sri Lanka. Sivamohan offers a powerful and detailed fictional telling about 1983’s Black July riots and the ensuing civil war in Sri Lanka.  A musician with a Tamil background experiences the war as someone who primarily works with Sinhala lyrics and cinema, often funded by the government with a focus on Sinhala nationalist ideas in a newly postcolonial Sri Lanka. Rex Periyasamy, the musician; his wife, Kanthi, who was hitherto a single mother and Sinhalese; and his stepson, Lucky, try to progress as a family in the 1980s until the moment the ethnic conflict escalates into a war in 1983. When Rex leaves his studio for the registration of their marriage, his nonchalance transfers to the viewer; a local audience member would be forced to pause and accept the possibility of a marriage between a Sinhalese woman and a Tamil man in the 1980s and the seeming lack of stigma associated with the bride being a single mother. Their first neighbourhood as a new nuclear family exemplifies this the most. In spite of living in a spatially inadequate home located in an unsafe area, we see that the Periyasamys’ neighbours are cordial and non-judgemental. 

Sivamohan’s storytelling of the coexistence of ethnic discrimination and cohesion from the perspective of a small nuclear family is the strongest aspect of the film. A Sinhala version of the infamous song “Radhae Unakku Kobam Aagathadi” from the 1937 Tamil film Chintamani pervades the first half of the film. Coveted as patriotic, the song implies that Sri Lanka is a country of people who have arrived from multiple places around the world, which makes it the multicultural island it is today. As the motif repeats through the film, it stands in as a reminder for all three main characters about what Sri Lanka used to be before 1983.

Midway through the film, we are exposed to horrors that complicate their relationships with each other and an increasingly racially and religiously divided society. Rex tries not to dwell too much on the discrimination and fear he might face because of his Tamil identity. In the early years of the ethnic conflict, at a gathering with family and friends, Rex is asked about his positionality about the ongoing ethnic tension and the role of music in times of difficulty. In a calm yet assertive tone, he says that music is for soothing and is for everyone—it does not see nor hear ethnic and religious differences.

Rex’s love for the Chintamani track extends beyond the patriotic when he starts playing music for his wife to sing at the same gathering. They both contain a demeanour of solace and affection. Kanthi, who switches from the Kandyan or openly Sinhala version of the sari into its ‘Indian’ or Hindu version with a pottu, faces a different yet equally complex difficulty—on paper she is Sinhalese, yet at face value she is Tamil. Lucky, despite having fully ‘Sinhala’ blood, is called a “Tiger cub” by acquaintances—increasing his disdain for his stepfather, without whom he would not be labelled so. He is resilient, however, and finds his first love with a Tamil girl while acquainting himself with current musical trends such as Fleetwood Mac. He also starts playing music at house parties, away from his stepfather’s traditional setup of compositions for film. The Periyasamy family slowly grows with the birth of a daughter and the move to a bigger, more spacious house.

Soon after, the film cuts to a studio where two men speaking Tamil overhear someone making an aggressive comment in Sinhala about the Tamil community. While processing the film, they ask each other what this phenomenon of hatred among normal people is, and we hear Kanthi warning Rex not to speak to anyone in Tamil as he might be caught and killed. The studio is burnt down a few days later by extremist Sinhalese mobs. The Periyasamys are forced to watch their loved ones being set ablaze while hiding inside a body of water in the darkness. As the fire amidst the darkness overpowers them, we only see their eyes above the water. The acting ensemble shines here as they express fear through just their eyes. 

Sivamohan embraces her position as a first-hand witness of the civil war, and this enriches the emotional experience of the viewer—we long for the Chintamani track to return as much as we long for a happy ending for the Periyasamys. The camera movements experiment with space and affect. For instance, when Kanthi enters her new home as the bride of Rex, we see the small yet welcoming atmosphere of the Periyasamys’ house from her eyes. The camera lens moves with her—it momentarily settles at the mirror next to an almost empty bathroom shelf and then moves to closeups of Rex’s numerous musical instruments.

Kanthi—and by extension, the audience—immediately learn that Rex measures his success from his artistic prowess and not materialistic things. Throughout the film, Sivamohan keeps cutting to a conversation among Rex, Kanthi and Lucky where they speak about their respective memories of 1983. Everyone feels that Rex has the most significant story to tell, yet Sivamohan herself reminds us that Kanthi and Lucky have their experiences, too, with the flashbacks including some stories where they claim the limelight. 

In a country where epic stories and Sinhala legends are produced and reproduced in a multitude of formats for the big screen with overt objectives of uniting all its ethnicities, Sons and Fathers reminds us that unity and cohesion are within us as long as we dare to accept it and practice it in our daily lives, through music, in particular. Today, I wonder if we need another Saroja in Sri Lanka. What we perhaps need are stories of vulnerability, raw emotion and resilience from young people as Sri Lanka goes through a current political and economic moment of instability even as it continues to reconcile with the injustice in its past. 

To learn more about Sumathy Sivamohan’s work, read Banhi Sarkar’s essay on the documentary Amid the Villus (2022). To learn more about the 1983 Black July Riots, read Pramodha Weerasekera’s reflections on ’83:A Very Short Film (2016) by Sumudu Athukorala, Sumedha Kelegama and Irushi Tennekoon.

All images are stills from Sons and Fathers (2017) by Sumathy Sivamohan. Images courtesy of the director.