I am so happy and pleased and proud to see a movie like this filmed in Sri Lanka and on Netflix!!! I hope this film starts conversations and I hope and pray for that change and justice come to the LGBT community in Sri Lanka. I hate racism and homophobia so much.
Plot summary
Sri Lanka of the 70's and 80's. The elegant world of upper class Tamils, a minority group in a largely majority Sinhalese country. At 8, Arjie loves dressing up like a bride and acting out a bridal procession with his girl cousins. When he is discovered by the adults, he wonders why he's being called "funny", a word whose meaning he can't understand, though he knows it's a 'bad' thing. Arjie is taken up by his magnetic aunt Radha, who has just returned from Canada. Radha sees that Arjie is gay and is determined to protect him and build his self-worth. But her life gets complicated when she falls in love with Anil, a charismatic Sinhalese man. Their relationship crosses ethnic boundaries in a world that simmers with tensions between the Sinhalese and Tamils. Radha must choose between her family and her lover. Arjie, witnessing his aunt's journey, learns some bitter lessons about what is possible and not in the world. We flash forward to Arjie at 17, at a new school. There, Arjie falls in love with Shehan, a Sinhalese. Meanwhile, the ethnic tension spills over into civil war, during which the family end up fleeing to Canada as refugees. Arjie now is 'free' to pursue his sexual proclivities (homosexuality is still illegal in Sri Lanka). But freedom comes at a price. The price is the preconceptions a white society has about coloured people. On one level, Funny Boy is a coming-of-age love story and on another, a film about oppression of minorities, whether it is race, culture or sexuality.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Tech specs
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB 1004.8 MB
1280*534
English 2.0
NR
Movie Reviews
Reviewed by
I was born in America but my parents were born in Sri Lanka.
Reviewed by
Middle-of-the-road...
You like it or hate it... the director is an international fame and loved her other works esp Water which was also nominated for Oscar ....this movie is based on a book by Shyam Selvadurai.. it is a coming-of-age story of a boy in 1970s Sri Lanka amidst uprisings, tensions between Tamils and Sinhalese, ethnic riots... although, author stated that it is not really his biography but it does appear as his personal narrative when I read about him.. but disappointed with the middle-of-the-road and 1980s style direction, performances are average too... a multitask watch...
Reviewed by
Grabbed the attention throughout
I want to deal with one of the criticisms of the film right away. I do not speak any of the languages of the sub continent at all and wouldn't recognise the difference between Sinhalese or Tamil to save my life. Therefore the poor-quality spoken dialogue from the non-Tamil actors playing members of that ethnic group was something I obviously never picked up on. OK, I'd be furious if I was watching a German film and, say, Swedish people were speaking poor German and pretending to be that nationality. But as I was in no position to pick up on this here, it didn't detract from my enjoyment of the film.
I always enjoy films that combine personal dramas and stories with sweeping political and societal events. Here we had them all in spades. Family dynamics, prejudices in both the domestic sphere and the national arena, differing viewpoints on how to deal with inter-community strife.
Within a country whose idyllic existence is slowly being rent apart by ethnic tensions, a wealthy family lives these problems in microcosm. The plot outline on IMDB contains many spoilers but I am not going to be so crass. The film concentrates on two periods, first of all in 1974 when Arjie is a child interested in dressing up as a girl with a protective auntie encouraging him and his parents attempting to get him to "man up". We see the prejudices that occurred even then between Sinhalese and Tamils. And Aunty Radha forced to depart for Canada because of them.
Then we follow Arjie in his teenage years when prejudice is turning into hatred between communities. He is caught up in this in both his love life and with his family whose patriarch wrongly thought their position in society would protect them.
It's a part of history I knew about, but not in detail. I have looked it up since and can see that, although there is not a clear political context in the film, the major issues and events seem to be true. I was mesmerised throughout and fascinated by both the wider and the personal stories. I'm so glad I saw this film.