About halfway into the first hour of Riverstone, the film arrives at what could be one of its theses. In conversation with a police officer, a criminal named Nanditha (a convincingly miserable Randika Gunathilaka) says that killers and the police (Priyantha Sirikumara) are in similar jobs. The difference, as he sees it, is motive. While his killings are necessitated by contracts, the officer, on the other hand, does what he does for a salary. It is the kind of line that could be played for laughs in a grim comedy. But here it is meant—or spoken, at least—in earnest.
Programmed by the Singapore International Film Festival, the latest project from Sri Lankan director Lalith Rathnayake isn’t a comedy. It’s a drama invested in the commonalities between two “vocations” at different ends of the spectrum of morality. The vehicle for that idea is a screenplay (co-written by the director) in which a literal vehicle ferries three state workers and a criminal. In other words, this is a meditative project that puts cops and a robber on a road trip.
The resulting trip is anything but straightforward. These men all have lives elsewhere, and over the course of the journey, those lives interfere with their speed—and maybe even resolve. The most senior of the officers (Shyam Fernando) has taken a lover and uses the opportunity of the trip to drop off a gift. The least-ranked officer receives a call informing him of his wife’s ill health, sparking concerns about his low wages. The designated driver, Udayasiri (Mahendra Perera), is a fan of a trivia show on radio. The men take turns at the wheel and also at guarding Nanditha, who is handcuffed and stowed at the back of the vehicle.
On occasion, the film’s attempts to raise its own temperature through cuts to the cuffs on the criminal’s hands, feinting — as though Nanditha may show himself to be an action hero capable of the kind of freedom-engineering violence common to that genre. It’s no spoiler to say that Rathnayake, here, isn’t that kind of filmmaker. His sympathy does seem to me mostly with Nanditha but he has chosen a rather literary manner to convey that sympathy. (More on this in a bit.) In fact, the entire film has a literary texture—as if Rathnayake had adapted a short story, or wrote one and then reworked it in Final Draft. (This isn’t bad.)
Sometimes, the film’s characters speak in a manner that suggests bookishness, none more so than Nanditha. He gives four reasons as to why their destination (the film’s title) is named as it is. He has enough knowledge to supply correct answers to the trivia questions concerning celestial bodies, and towards the end, drops a line that mixes poetry and astronomy.
In short, a significant part of the film is spent humanising Nanditha, and by not showing or giving us an account of his crimes, Rathnayake puts his thumb on the scale. The criminal is nothing but honourable, even as he’s close to death, while the head of the police officers transporting him is in an extramarital affair with a young woman who accuses him of stinginess. And when one of the main actions of the criminal is revealed to be almost righteous, it comes to seem as though Nanditha might be the Christ. Is he, though? That’s a reading that may be plausible but it is not a reading that the film justifies, given the absence of back story. So that, whatever the intentions may be, that bit comes off as more sentimental than metaphorical.
Nevertheless, Riverstone will enjoy even more festival showings across Asia than it has already had, and it would be interesting to see it elsewhere after its festival run. It is a great-looking project, as it goes from aerial shots of a pretty pastoral landscape to the film’s impressively-filmed climactic moment in which two men talk and talk, sometimes in terse poetic terms but always illuminated, only by their vehicle headlights.
Director: Lalith Rathnayake
Writer: Lalith Rathnayake, Nilantha Perera
Cast: Shyam Fernando, Randika Gunathilaka, Priyantha Sirikumara, Mahendra Perera
Cinematographer: Prabath Roshan
Editor: Thissa Surendra
Producers: Prabath Roshan, Nimathi Porage
Venue: Singapore International Film Festival (Asian Feature Film Competition)
In Sinhala
119 minutes
