Review: Trishna (2011)
Cast: Freida Pinto, Riz Ahmed, Anurag Kashyap
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Country: UK
Genre: Drama
Official Trailer: Here
Editor’s Notes: Trishna opens in limited North American release today.
Phil Hoad’s piece “Freida Pinto and the rise of the ‘pan-ethnic’ star posted in The Guardian back in March positions Indian actress Freida Pinto, who rose to recognition through Slumdog Millionaire (2008, Danny Boyle), at a transitioning point in international film casting where an actor’s ethnicity has become as porous and boundary-less as cultural and economic markets. An argument that is nothing new at first glance, since Hollywood has made of ethnic passing one of its Orientalist fortes since the silent days. But the circumstances are different in the case of Pinto, whose oxymoronic ethnic ‘pan-ethnicity’ demonstrated in her film roles since Slumdog Millionaire makes of Hollywood’s all-white casts as the end-all and be-all of non-ethnicity (wherever the setting may be) uncomfortable, if not just downright ludicrous. But beyond Hoad’s piece is the comments section, where one will discover that Pinto as an actress provokes heated discussion, to a point that her casting in a film becomes a weighty issue unto itself, which runs the risk of detracting attention from the overall film in which she stars. Such an issue unfortunately shrouds Trishna and makes of it a more cumbersome affair than it should be, boiling down to Pinto’s dubious acting talent. So as admirable as filmmaker Michael Winterbottom’s intentions are in drawing out the radical nature of Thomas Hardy’s work—Trishna is an adaptation of his 1891 novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles—and drawing comparisons between the industrialisation of the colonial power that is England in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the industrialisation of the post-colonial emerging power that is India in the twenty-first century through the story of a woman’s experiences across different sectors of India, Trishna falls flat because of the necessity of Pinto’s centrality.
The first half hour or so of the film is interesting in this context, in that it feels like a documentary, as with so many of Winterbottom’s films, with the narrative poking its head here and there as if lethargically waking and not yet ready to get up and present itself.
The first half hour or so of the film is interesting in this context, in that it feels like a documentary, as with so many of Winterbottom’s films, with the narrative poking its head here and there as if lethargically waking and not yet ready to get up and present itself. The main characters Trishna (Pinto) and Jay (Riz Ahmed) meet soon enough in the most happenstance of circumstances—she works at the hotel where Jay and his friends stay during their travels in India; Jay’s attraction is immediately palpable—but the film takes its time, devoting much attention to locale, labour, the hotel, family scenes, fauna, and Trishna’s space and not Trishna necessarily. As with a great number of Winterbottom’s films as well, the physical act of journeying is crucial, beginning with Jay’s travels with his friends and then the many back-and-forth movements of Jay and Trishna, together or separate, and the changes in social setting—and changes in social mores and attitudes, especially with regards to women—that they encounter. A push-and-pull thus emerges between Winterbottom’s attention to the sociopolitical dynamic of places (Jaipur, Mumbai) in which Trishna finds herself and the narrative. This tension is commendably Hardy-esque, but then the film gives itself entirely over to the narrative of Trishna and Jay’s tragic relationship.
Trishna is meek, silent, never letting on how she feels about whatever happens. She goes about her journeys like a vanishing receptacle, with everyone around her pouring into her their feelings, strengths, flaws, mistakes, desires, and abuses as she enters into a relationship with Jay. She is a very self-effacing character, contained and constantly troubled. In short, Trishna has the entire world on her shoulders, navigating as she is forced to between supporting her family, figuring out her (fixed secondary) place in this world, and fending off advances of all sorts, calling for an equally self-effacing performance. Granted, Winterbottom did not want Pinto to emote or betray her state of mind at any given moment, limiting her inner life to occasional snippets of reaction through her eyes. In response, Pinto plays Trishna well enough, especially in moments without dialogue and when the camera simply hovers around her. But the charisma and emotions (however hidden they have to be) are sufficiently absent. This absence is all the more acute in scenes with co-star Ahmed—in other words, most of the film—who is wildly charismatic, persuasive, and provocative, conveying well his character’s multiple mood shifts from good to bad and to worse, as their relationship develops.
…Pinto plays Trishna well enough, especially in moments without dialogue and when the camera simply hovers around her. But the charisma and emotions (however hidden they have to be) are sufficiently absent.
As with a majority of Winterbottom’s films yet again, Trishna presents a mix of professional and non-professional actors local to the spaces of the film: the Rajasthani countryside; Rajasthan capital city of Jaipur; and Mumbai. The Mumbai vignette in particular takes on a great metafilmic colour since one of the Indian producers of the film, producer/director/writer Anurag Kashyap, and actress Kalki Koechlin appear as “themselves,” as a part of the world of Bollywood production that Trishna glimpses when she moves to Mumbai with Jay.
Formally, as already mentioned, Trishna is documentary-like in its hand-held proximity, which interestingly clashes with Trishna’s reticence, producing an unsettling, even irritating feeling. The film also repeats many scenes, above all those of Trishna’s, to emphasise the monotonous passing of time and the weight of routine and her class. The impact of this repetition also heightens the sadistic turn that Trishna and Jay’s relationship takes towards the end. A very fragile, torturous study of power, individual will, migration, modernisation, and transitions, where the woman’s body is the fundamental pivot around which all of these things turn. An interpretation of the film’s subject that is significantly mirrored somewhat in debates on Pinto as individual and sign.
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