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TIMES POSTCARD
One shot one: Review two. Ditto
By Rajpal Abeynayake
It was quite incidentally, that the review of One Shot (One Shot One is it?) was done in this column. But, it brought all kinds of characters off the woodwork….

Among others who called me, however, it was Ranjan Ramanayake who was the most unexpected. He is the film’s director.
His case was that I’d seen only three reels of the flick. I know nothing about reels, but all I know is I walked out and wrote a review.
Ramanayake called and asked “would you please see the whole film and write a fresh review”?

I said that’s a difficult proposition; I am going to have to sit through it?
“Well I’d still like you to come and see it, especially the part with Ravindra Randeniya’s dialogue.’’ he said.
I responded: “You send me two tickets then. That way I can talk and take time off if I want to.’’
“I’ll send you five,’’ he said.

‘’No two would do,’’ I implored.
So, One Shot One it was, again. My company went to the cinema early; I didn’t want to see the part I had already sat through – but I went for the rest of it.
I heard out Ravindra Randeniya also - - and the fact that he speaks in English makes no difference. The film is still, for me, alas, a crude one. Want one reason for it??

The only way Ramanayake -- or his scriptwriter -- can show the emotion of fright is by urination.
So Ramanayake’s nation is an urination-nation.
I counted.
There are almost five occasions I think where a man pisses because he is scared stiff of something or someone. That kind of attitude to filmmaking just, well, pisses you off.

That’s all that I was trying to say in my earlier review.
Ramanayake no doubt wants to expose politicians as he claims - - and no doubt he is at liberty to do it his way.

All I was commenting on was his grandstanding. One crude movie doesn’t a political satire make --and if Ramanayake wanted to expose politicians, he could have made the movie less crude, and we would have given him the benefit of the doubt.However, he may be appealing to the gallery. He’s making money at the box office.

Hitler was popular too, I’m told.
Which is not to say that Ramanayake is a Fuehrer in sheep’s clothing.
It’s just that his holier than thou grandstanding is a bit --- well – embarrassing.

He talks as if he is sermonizing about Sodom and Gomorrah – when he is more like a propagandist who gets children out of school to demonstrate against political causes.

He brings art down to the level of the vulgar to expose politicians. Politicians are already exposed. People know only too well that they are a bunch of crooks without Ramanayake having to tell them. Ramanayake is only bringing satire down to the level of the off-putting slapstick.

So somebody asked me: how can you do a review if you’ve seen only part of the film? Since Ramanayake believes in urination in his urination-nation of a movie, let me try to get it across to him in a idiom that he will no doubt understand. When I enter a toilet, I know it’s one. I won’t have to sit on the commode for an hour to learn that fact.
Comprende, friend?

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