Spellbinding Journey Through : Time and Love
Artists are a kind of predictors who can perceive things that society hadn’t sensed before. They create new concepts to encourage society to think in new perspectives. Arthur C Clarke, a famous writer, introduced significant predictive ideas to the world through his fiction. For instance, the Geostationary Communication Satellite system was first envisioned in his works before it became a reality. Similarly, many artists in the past predicted the concept of television long before it became known.
The American cartoon series ‘The Simpsons’ is also renowned for its predictive storytelling, which has contributed to its popularity today. It appears that art has the ability to transcend time and offer foresight.
Frozen Cosmos, the recently premiered film by Jayantha Chandrasiri, uniquely captures the essence of time not only in an artistic manner but also with a scientific touch. The movie revolves around the relationships among Rajini, Dankon, Varenya, and Sumadya, skillfully weaving the idea of time. Rajini and Dankon lived in the 60s, while the current period is represented by Varenya and Sumadya. Sumadya becomes the time-traveling medium that connects these two eras.
Conventional learning pattern
The movie primarily presents two ideas about time simulation. The first is ‘Learning from the future.’ In the story, popular actress Rajini improves her performances after being coached by a future man, Varenya. This challenges our conventional learning pattern, where we typically learn from our past experiences and the knowledge passed down by our ancestors. The movie intriguingly suggests that learning can also occur from the future through time travel, disrupting our current learning systems.
Learning from the future, like Rajini does, would be preferable to learning from the past. The future is the only thing we can face today, while the past has already happened. If we can learn from the future, it provides a specific guide to the present without the need for guesswork or multiple options. The film implies that the future is already set, firmly written in another time simulation. In the words of E.H. Carr, the movie proposes that the ‘past is not only the key to understanding the present,’ but it also holds the potential for shaping the future.
Scientific thought
During the period of the Maya-Inca civilization, humans tried to predict the future by tapping into an invisible knowledge they had observed. In Asian countries, people believed in ‘Nadi Wakyam,’ a method that predicted the future. Some scholarly works based on scientific thought also asserted that the future isn’t merely a situation where unexpected events happen randomly. Instead, they emphasized that everything happens with some form of bias, as people naturally direct their energy towards what they expect to occur. Thus, the future is not a realm with infinite choices; even with billions of possibilities, there can still be certainty. The only catch is that we often don’t consider something until it happens.
The story beautifully conveys the idea that:
“There was a thought, but there was no one to think There was a sensation, but there was no one to sense.”
For instance, ‘Varenya’ predicts that ‘Rajini’ will become his favorite actress, but not in her present state. Rather, he sees it happening in her future, after she acts in several films directed by ‘Mahadeva Danthanarayana.’ Thus, she seems to have discovered her destiny as a certain event through Varenya’s insight.
The second concept revolves around the combination of ‘super-position’ and ‘entanglement’ theories recently discovered in quantum science, which have gained popularity in contemporary discourses and were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2022 to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger for their experiments with entangled photons. These experiments established the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneered quantum information science. Colliding with Einstein’s ‘Relativity,’ both ‘super-position’ and ‘Entanglement’ theories suggest the existence of another invisible energy beyond light. According to the super-position theory, multiple states can coexist simultaneously. In relation to the story, Varenya is surprised when Rajini tells him that she is alive, as he knows that she died many years ago. This leads to the conclusion that both Rajini and Varenya are alive in the current moment, despite their vast time separation, which contradicts Einstein’s theory.
The ‘entanglement’ theory is evident when Rajini and Varenya are consciously connected. Despite being in vastly different time periods, they can share their feelings and ideas. Rajini can truly see her beloved Varenya and is tempted to create a portrait of him. If only the effect of light, as per Einstein’s words, was involved, Rajini and Varenya’s connection would not have happened. They would have had to wait for many decades to hear from or respond to each other through the travel of light. Instead, they share their thoughts, learning, and experiences within mere seconds, indicating that there is something invisible that can surpass the speed of light.
According to the teachings of Buddhism, the mind is the most powerful force that can bring peace to one’s soul. When individuals elevate their minds spiritually, Buddhists believe they can transcend physical states such as time, space, their own bodies, environment, weather, and the Earth itself.
As the story approaches its climax, it delivers a massive impact with just a single paper cutting. Varenya comes across an article about Rajini in the ‘Sarasaviya’ newspaper. The article reveals that Rajini wrote poems to her imaginary future lover. This becomes the most remarkable aspect that elevates Rajini and Varenya’s relationship to an adorably realistic stage. It resembles the way the film ‘Da Vinci Code’ concludes. Similar to the doctrine of cause and effect in Buddhism, Rajini and Varenya’s love never ended without leaving a single mark. The two poems published in the newspaper by Rajini and Varenya symbolize their love until the very end.