As adolescents, Rukmani Devi, the unsurpassed embodiment of dramatic talent this country has ever known, was the irresistible dream girl and enchanting talent this country has ever known, was the irresistible dream girl and enchanting nightingale we fantasised about. That must be why I cannot see Malini Fonseka without seeing behind her the shadow of Rukmani Devi. Let me come straight out and declare it: for many of my generation, Malini is the next best thing to Rukmani. Question Lest you think that senility is loosening my inhibitions, let me pose the question why millions of ordinary people are enamoured of filmstars. In 1926 when Rudolf Valentino the original heart-throb of the film world died at age 31, thousands of women nearly rioted at his funeral. The most plausible answer known to me comes from Dr. Desmond Morris, the famous author of the million-copy bestseller called 'The Naked Ape'. His theory is that the human animal is by nature pair-bonding but polyerotic. In plain English what this means is that although humans set up families in pairs, they are sexually aroused by many. This makes biological sense. By keeping father and mother together pair-bonding serves the best interests of human offspring who have a very long period of dependency on parents. (About a quarter of a century if the offspring take up Medicine as a career!) The polyerotic nature of humans promotes optimal natural selection of mating partners. These behavioural traits did not create any serious problems during the long long, tribal hunting stage of human social evolution. Why not? Because - so the explanation goes - in those days the adult fertile females of a given tribe were all more or less in a constant state of pregnancy and all the adult males went hunting together. The tribe was so small that everybody knew everybody else. They were so united that the question of unethical behaviour hardly arose. Moreover, the bugbear of private property was a thing of the future. Malini Fonseka's memorable performance as the guileless sacrificial lamb in Lester James Peiris's masterpiece Nidhanaya - acclaimed as one of the best 100 motion pictures of all time - immortalized her. Beauty and Cinema Cinema is quintessentially a visual medium. It exerts its hold on us by parading beauty which is nothing but the promise of biological happiness. From a biological point of view, beauty serves but one purpose: it promotes the perpetuation of the human race. Long years ago Havelock Ellis, who wrote extensively on the psychology of sex, published an essay titled "What Makes a Woman Beautiful?" In it he quotes the 14th century English poet Geoffry Chaucer's view that a beautiful woman is one "with buttocks broad and breasts rounded and high." Ellis points out that a woman with those physical attributes is ideal for bearing children and suckling them. Biologically speaking, physical beauty is a sign of health, fertility and genetic quality. Young women with large eyes, full red lips, smooth, moist taut skin and firm breasts have been rated as the ones who will give a man the best chance of leaving behind many offspring. Tushara Use that checklist, if you will, and judge any actress (or other woman) you care to evaluate. In my judgment, Malini Fonseka passes the test with flying colours. Her beauty predicates motherhood and that accounts for her enduring appeal in our culture. She is not just a fleeting sex kitten for us to gape and talk about - and forget. After his first look at Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton said: "Her breasts will topple empires before they withered......she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen". In our world of cinema in the film Thushara (1973) Malini Fonseka co-starred with Vijaya Kumaratunga at a time when they were lovers in real life. No wonder Thushara became the most popular film of our times. In Bambaru Avith (1978) again playing opposite Vijaya Kumaratunga, she depicts raw, calculating, female carnality dressed up as innocence. The performance won her the award for the Best Actress of the Year and Malini Fonseka became a movie superstar. From 1980 through 1985, year after year, for six years, tens of thousands of fans voted her as their most popular actress. Even today, after nearly four decades on the silver screen, Malini Fonseka's ripe, lustrous beauty visibly launches any number of picture spreads. Visual Medium You may wonder whether this sharp focus on the persona of Malini Fonseka is the academically correct approach to a valid appraisal of Malini Fonseka the artist. If you think it is not the correct approach please realise that cinema is first, last and always a visual medium. So its superstars have been and have to be beautiful people. Studies have shown that even three month old infants prefer to look at pretty faces! Like all great stars, however, Malini is not just a good looker. She is a bright and articulate woman with a mind of her own. She can intelligently discuss a range of subjects. She has acquired coping skills and has cultivated inner serenity. But, above all, she can truly act. To-date she has starred in 142 films and has been adjudged 'Best Actress' 13 times. She has been chosen to play major roles by almost all our best film makers - Lester James Peries, Dharmasena Pathiraja, Vasantha Obeysekera, Amaranath Jayatilleka, Sunil Ariyaratne, Vijaya Dharmasiri, Parakrama Nirilla, Sugathapala Senerath Yapa and Tissa Abeysekera. Malini Fonseka has also won international acclaim. In fact she happens to be the first filmstar from our country to have won an international award. That was at the 9th International Moscow Film Festival held in 1977, where she won the award reserved for the Best Actress from the Asian region. She achieved another first in 1979 when she was contracted to play opposite Sivaji Ganeshan in the Tamil film titled Pilot Premnath. The film called Sthree saw Malini Fonseka emerging as a filmmaker in her own right. She also played the keyrole in it - the role of a woman who takes arms against a fiercely patriarchal society. The film unfolds a gripping drama with a social moral: if women are to win their rights in this society they have to learn to fight for them. Television Having glittered on the theatrical stage and shone brilliantly on the silver screen for decades, in 1984 Malini Fonseka alighted on television, the reigning medium of mass entertainment. She has played major roles in 17 teledramas, eight of which she has also directed. Perhaps her most memorable role was in Tissa Abeysekera's Pitagankarayo for which she won a Best Actress Award. Malini Fonseka is a self-taught artist. She has learned the truths of life in the School of Life. Being the third child and first-born girl in a closely-knit family of 11 children, she blossomed into a charismatic personality. She has learned to enjoy more the pleasures of her life than to suffer from its pains. Her family has turned to her and received in full measure sustenance, guidance and inspiration. In 1992 she played an impressive role in a film called Umayangana which figured several Fonsekas. I was requested to review it and I went so far as to say: "When an innocent Fonseka as lovely as Malini is brutally murdered...even on the screen, my blood cries for vengeance. And Ananda Fonseka directs Malini Fonseka acting through Damayanthi Fonseka to give the murderers hell". It may be asked why I wished to avenge the screen death of this particular Fonseka. Is Malini Fonseka my own flesh and blood? The answer is "no", but it was by the skin of her teeth that she escaped becoming part of my kith-in-law. That, however, is another story. Great actress Malini Fonseka must surely be the most photographed woman in the history of our country. She attracts cameras in the way that a magnet attracts iron filings. At the Sarasavi festival held at the BMICH last year I had been allotted a seat directly behind the one in which Malini Fonseka sat. As a spin-off I received my longest and most widely viewed exposure on television to-date. The cliché about the inevitable woman behind every great man is still valid. For my part, I now know what a great advantage it can be for a man to sit behind a great actress!
Dr. Carlo Fonseka: Sri Lankan Physician
The year was 1977, the venue, the international Film Festival in Delhi, India. Sri Lankans entry in the competition was Amaranath Jayatileke’s “Siripala and Ranmenika”. Playing the title role of the outlaw’s wife was Malani Fonseka, looking every inch the glamorous film star. The scene now shifts to grand dining hall of the Ashok Hotel. where official guests and the members of the jury were lodged. Chairman of the jury was great the Indian Director Sathyajith Ray. Seated alone in splendid isolation with that combination of grandeur, awe and elegance, rather like an Indian Prince was Ray, nibbling at his lunch, a far away, distractive look on his face. Seeing me enter the hall, he called me over to table, as it turned out to be, to divulge a Jury secret. That morning they had seen the Sri Lankan film. He had been enormously impressed by Malini’s performance. Keep this to yourself” he said stretching his 6ft 5 inc frame over the table-‘I must get this girl an award, some award –its unfortunate the film’s been scheduled so late. The Jury has decided on the best actress award and its too late to upset the Jury’s verdict. At least I’ll get her a special Diploma. What surprises me is the actress I’ve seen around here and the character on the screen is one and the same person. I can tell you this. “No Bengali actress, however good she may be will ever allow herself to be so distorted as Malini is in the sri lankan film –no, “not even in a film of mine”. What Ray found difficult to reconcile are the two images – one the glamorous film star physically present at the festival and the disfigured face of Ranmenika in the film. As sumithra and I had to leave the festival before it ended I thought I should at least confide in Malini that she might win something, though I tried to be as vague as possible. It was a bitter –sweet triumph in that there was apparently no time to have the special Diploma of honour ready at the award winning ceremony which brings the curtain down at the end of the festival. Malini had to be content with a special reception at the Indian High Commission in Colombo a few weeks later. However to have made such and impact on one of the world’s greatest directors, particularly one who has excelled in molding great performances from actresses in his native Bengal viz. Madhabhi Mukherjee, Sharmilla Tagore, Mamata Shankar,Karuna Bannerjee etc…. I should think is reward enough. Malini has acted in five major films of mine. In 03 of them “Nidhanaya” “Baddegama” and “Wekanda Walauwa” she creates 03 unforgettable characters – the virginal, sacrificial Victim in “Nidhanaya”, the young village lass who turns into an old hag waiting for death in wolf’s classic “Baddegama”, and the aging widow, her private grief etched on her wrinkled face as gradually she loses her son, her husband, her mansion, her dignity in the longest performance of her career. Cast for her skill in portraying divers characters, driven to the brink by private tragedies, she has never failed, at least in the estimation either of the director or the critics, both local and foreign. I have never cast her because of her popularity but almost as a challenge to her popular image in the numerous commercial films which she has been acting in. To play the old hag, to look plain, unattractive, if the characters in Dharmasena Pathiraja’s films, driven by narrative complexities and social and political imperatives of a “New Cinema” she has never faltered. It has been so with many other directors. What is quite remarkable is also her personal popularity with the masses. Not since Rukmani Devi has an actress been so beloved of the people and by the people. To have acted in well over a hundred films is in itself an achievement particularly in the context of an industry, notoriously unstable, a heless vitim of conflicting Government policies, regarded as commercially non-viable despite the Government’s 100% Tax Exemption Scheme for investment on films. It may be pointed by some that most of her films are commercial and therefore unworthy of serious attention, but these are the very films that the masses remember her by. Some of us tend to forget that switching over firm the acting style demanded by the commercial formula film to the more serious film depends on a change of technique of sensibility, which by it’s very nature is a creative process-and it is in making this Malini has triumphantly succeeded. In this brief tribute it would be difficult to discuss her work as a director in her own right and her contribution to the small screen, both as actress and director-though mention must be made of her extraordinary performance in Tissa Abeysekara’s epic TV series “Pitagamkarayo”. Suffice it to say that on the occasion of a special homage to Malini Fonseka , all of us who have worked in the Sri Lankan Cinema will wish her many more years in a medium that has been enriched by her outstanding talents.
Dr Lester James Peiris: Sri Lankan Film Directoy