FILM REVIEW
Review Scoring Chart - 10:
Masterpiece; 9: Outstanding; 8: Very Good; 7: Good; 6: Above
Average; 5: Average; 4: Below Average; 3: Bad; 2: Awful; 1:
Reprehensible; 0: Non- Functional.
TRISHNA
Dir: Michael Winterbottom
Stars: Frieda Pinto, Riz Ahmed, Roshan Seth
Running Time: 117mins [This article was first published here and on Flixist as part of last year's London Film Festival coverage. 'Trishna' is released in the UK tomorrow.]
There haven't been many notable British films at this year's London Film Festival, but Trishna was one I was particularly looking forward to. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles
is one of my three favourite novels and shifting Hardy's narrative to
modern day India sounded like a clever way of updating the story in a
country where ideas of class and religious morality still hold
considerable sway. Though not always successful in his endeavours,
Michael Winterbottom is rarely anything if not an interesting director
who makes brave choices, so Trishna seemed to have everything in place to be something of an underdog LFF favourite.
Reaction to the film has proven divisive: I have read it described by
audiences and critics alike as both a disaster and masterpiece, but the
truth lies somewhere in the middle. There's a terrific story to be told
here, but no-one involved seem entirely sure of what it is. The film
looks gorgeous - how could it not, with Frieda Pinto in the starring
role? - and is often moving, but is neither faithful enough to Hardy to
be a worthy adaptation, nor confident enough in the changes it makes to
the original text.
Where Hardy's novel focused on the fall of a pure woman betrayed by
the people and hypocritical morals of her time, Winterbottom's film is a
broader look at the difficulties of being a woman growing up in a
society divided between old morals and new freedoms, and of the
subsequent struggles with social mobility. The themes capture much of
Hardy's original intentions in Tess, but are a little too
wide-ranging to be as emotionally compelling as the source novel. Tess
toiled and struggled in the hope that the people she put her faith in
would eventually relieve her agony, making every fresh horror she
suffered a new indictment of a society that had no place for women seen
as 'impure', no matter how good their souls. Trishna, on the other hand,
is at least somewhat complicit in her own downfall, making a conscious
decision which she knows goes against the morals of her community. She
certainly doesn't deserve the consequences, but that moment of surrender
stains her position as the woman pure of heart, thus reducing the
weight of the social critique.
Trishna's more active nature, compared to the almost completely
reactive Tess, will no doubt please feminists who find Hardy's character
an offensive disgrace - although Tess' devotion to her principles makes
her more strong-willed than she is often given credit for - but misses
the point of why Hardy made his character the way he did. She was a
woman forced into a certain role, but punished for deviating from it
because of events she had no control over. Trishna may be slightly more
modern in that she chooses to take a leap of faith which ends up going
badly wrong, but the changes feel like they miss Hardy's point without
replacing it with anything new.
Fusing Tess' two suitors into a single
character, rich hotelier's son Jay, also leads to complications,
especially with shifts in personality that are never properly justified.
In particular, his treatment of Trishna which finally tips her over
into taking decisive action comes completely out of the blue and robs
the ending of the final, heartbreaking twist of the knife which Hardy
inflicted on his tragic heroine.
The actors in the two key roles, Pinto as Trishna and Riz Ahmed as
Jay, suffer a little from the uncertainty of the material they are
playing. Ahmed manages to blend his character's charismatic and
conniving natures into a reasonably believeable character, but struggles
when he has to emphasize either over the other. When he's good, he
seems almost too good - nary a hint of the control freak supposedly
lurking beneath the surface. When he's bad, he is not given enough to
work with to justify such lurching shifts in behaviour. Hardy's Angel
and Alec represented two of very different sins, which don't quite
combine comfortably into one character.
As Trishna, Pinto is radiant and her quiet manner earns a great deal
of sympathy, but she is almost too beautiful for the environment she is
supposed to come from. Her complexion is too perfect, her hands too
unscarred, to sell that she is a girl who has had to live in poverty and
do a great deal of manual work. Even if she does make more direct
decisions than Tess, her Trishna is noticeably less forceful in her
strength of will. Tess lived by a certain code she believed in and was
let down by other people's failings, but Trisha continually makes
sacrifices in the hope that others will justify them. In that respect,
she's actually a less strong character than the Hardy girl. As beautiful
as Pinto is, Winterbottom never manages to capture her in the same
adoring light as Hardy wrote Tess: he had clearly fallen in love with
his character, meaning the reader did too. Winterbottom's camera never
makes that same connection.
On the plus side, Winterbottom has a marvellous time capturing the colours and sights of an evolving India. Like Slumdog Millionaire,
a natural point of comparison for this film given the shared location
and romantic plot, the film looks at India as a country divided between
its rapidly developing urban areas and impoverished rural landscapes. It
is one of the more effective reflections of suggested ideas about class
and evolving moralities, and despite one brief Bollywood number,
generally avoids the clichés. In fact, Winterbottom captures a much more
vivid sense of the nation's history than Danny Boyle did, touring
temples and crumbling old hotels without staring in the manner of a
tourist. The score, by Shigeru Umebayashi, sounds appropriate to the
culture and sufficiently melancholy for the feel of the story, but again
holds back from anything overfamiliar.
Though it has problems as an adaptation of Hardy, as a story in its own right Trisha
still hits many affecting emotional cues, not least in the slow
degradation of a passionate young love turning sour by social imbalance.
Winterbottom may not make us as enamoured of his heroine as Hardy did,
but we feel for her when the pressures start mounting. Only the ending
really fails to connect, because Jay's character evolution is too
jarring and Pinto struggles to match a difficult challenge, which Hardy
purists will again point to as a moment which lacks the heartfelt sorrow
of Tess' ultimate fate. Trishna cannot match Hardy for passion
or purpose, and lacks clarity as a story in its own right. As a sensory
experience, lavishing in the changing sounds and colours of a new India,
it is something to relish. A shame that its heart is so conflicted. [ 6 ]
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