The Times Are Changing
Saibal Chatterjee
20.10.2011 - Michael Winterbottom's
Trishna is a quirky, solid cinematic
experiment that takes the core of a late-Victorian English novel,
Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and places it
bang in the middle of the chaotic energy of contemporary India.
Winterbottom's consistently unfussy approach to the literary source
material and the unusual narrative setting lends Trishna,
starring an aptly cast Freida Pinto as the tragic central
character, an easy flow. The director takes liberties with Hardy's
1891 novel while investing his shooting style with an air of
docudrama realism that gives way to a climactic explosion of
violence and exposes the tensions simmering under the surface of an
unequal relationship between a wealthy young man and a village girl
of modest means.
With tools that are focused on responding to stimuli of the
moment rather than proceeding along predetermined narrative lines,
Winterbottom wades into a complicated cultural milieu in which
rapid urbanization and economic growth are driving traditional
communities into a dizzying spiral of change too drastic for the
instant comprehension of those in its throes.
The Indian avatar of Tess, like Hardy's heroine, is a "pure
woman": trusting, gullible and vulnerable to the unreliable ways of
the world. In Hardy's novel, there were two men in Tess's life, the
exploitative Alec and the well-meaning but feckless Angel.
In Trishna's world, the two men are merged into one: Jay (Riz
Ahmed), the wealthy and wayward scion of a hospitality industry
tycoon's family who is sent to India from England to expand his
father's business. The young man arrives in a Rajasthan city to
take control of a new heritage hotel, chances upon the charming
Trishna on a trip to a remote temple, and seduces her after saving
her one night from the unwanted attention of a bunch of
goons.
When Jay first meets Trishna, she is recovering from injuries
sustained in an accident involving her father's auto-rickshaw, the
poor rustic family's only means of livelihood. With her hapless
father laid up in bed and the auto-rickshaw badly damaged, Trishna
travels to town and takes up a job in Jay's hotel. At first the man
appears to be genuinely in love with her, but as time passes
(during which the couple relocate to Mumbai, where Jay wants to set
himself up in the Indian movie business) the relationship
degenerates.
In the sequences leading up to a shocking finale, Trishna finds
that the class divide is too yawning to be bridged. As she is
increasingly objectified by a man who doesn't understand the real
needs of a woman looking for a new life, Trishna is gripped by a
sense of strong resentment. From here on, a tragic ending is but
inevitable. Trishna isn't intense, unrelenting drama.
Instead Winterbottom keeps his focus squarely on the impact of
abrupt social change on individual lives, and it is precise and
incisive in its exploration of a world in disquieting flux.
Trishna screens Thursday, October 20 at
9:45pm at Marina Mall's VOX Cinemas. Director Michael Winterbottom
will be in attendance to introduce the film and answer questions
afterward.