The film Maya (Illusion) is based on the novel of the same name by Manel Abeyratne and it is produced and directed by Sumitra Peries. It stars Swarna Mallawarachi, Geeta Kumarasinghe, Ravindra Randeniya and Tony Ranasinghe in the main roles. The screenplay is by Deshabandu Dr. Tissa Abeysekara and the music is composed by Deshamanya Kala Keerthi Dr. Premasiri Khemadasa.
The film begins in Colombo, Sri Lanka with the depiction of an eight-year-old girl named Nelum writing a letter to her father who lives in London, England. In the letter, Nelum tells her father that her mother told her it is winter in England and snowing. Nelum tells her father that she likes to see snow and she is playing the role of Snow White in her school play which is a Sinhala musical adaptation of the fairytale Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Nelum asks her father to come home soon.
Nelum’s mother Neela is an immoral woman with a bad character and a promiscuous personality who is having fling with a man who murders her and Nelum. The director subtly and repeatedly focuses the camera on an ornament which depicts two fire breathing dragons facing each other that is placed next to a framed photograph of Neela that suggests to the viewer that Neela is evil and has a hidden self. Sumitra Peries brilliantly creates a sinister atmosphere of gloom and foreboding in the large, lonely house where Neela and Nelum live with the domestic help Maggie.
The film explores the theme of re-birth because Nelum is re-born to a poor single woman who has been abandoned by her husband in an up country village in Sri Lanka. Nelum’s new mother names her Kumari which is significant because the name Snow White translates into Hima Kumari in Sinhala and Nelum was murdered immediately after she returned home from rehearsals. Also, the word Hima which translates into snow or mist is significant because Nelum expresses a desire to see snow in the letter to her father and she is re-born in an up country village which is surrounded by mist.
There is also a recurring image of flowers which is significant. For example, Nelum holds a bouquet of flowers in her hand and is dressed in a white costume as Snow White which resembles a wedding gown when she is murdered. Also, her name Nelum means lotus flower in Sinhala.
As the plot unfolds, a journalist hears about Nelum’s re-birth as Kumari and goes to visit her in the village and an article about her re-birth is published in the newspapers. Nelum / Kumari’s murderer sees the article and hunts her down to the village and tries to murder her, and the police intervene and suggest that she is moved to her previous home in Colombo. Nelum / Kumari see her mother Neela’s ghost in her previous home and faints.
The film’s title Maya which means illusion in Sinhala is significant because it suggests that although Kumari seems to forget the memories of her past life as Nelum after the death of the murderer and claims not to remember the events of the past few days, it is only an illusion and she is either pretending not to remember her past life so that she could live a normal life as Kumari, or that her conscious mind has temporarily buried the memories of her past life in her sub-conscious mind but these memories drive her unconsciously and they could resurface at any moment.
There is a significant connection between memory and music in the film, and the musical score which is brilliantly composed by Dr. Premasiri Khemadasa is powerfully evocative of repressed memory and desire. For example, the title song ‘Hima Kumari’ of the Sinhala musical adaptation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is significant because it is re-played in Kumari’s mind when she remembers the role she played as Snow White in her past life as Nelum.
The film explores intriguing questions about death and the afterlife and where the soul goes after death and the supernatural, and lends itself to a psychological study of Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis and the unconscious mind and more importantly to Carl Gustav Jung’s theory of parapsychology and the collective unconscious and archetypes.
The screenplay is beautifully written in eloquent Sinhala by Dr. Tissa Abeysekara. Maya is a subtly nuanced and beautifully made film which bears testimony to Sumitra Peries’s brilliance as a film director.