Trishna Movie Review

Trishna 

                                                 

Trishna is a British drama film directed by Michael Winterbottom. It is released on 2011. The plot of this movie is an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's novel "Tess of the d'Urbervilles". The major roles of the movie Trishna are played by Freida Pinto, Riz Ahmed, Roshan Seth and Anurag Kashyap.

The movie Trishna is about a village girl from India, who comes to big cities to chase her dreams. This movie is based on Indian cultures and values, like the fantasy movie Life of Pi.

Freida Pinto in the movie Trishna

Plot:

This movie Trishna tells the story of an Indian village girl named Trishna. Her regular life involves helping with her father’s business, spending time with her younger siblings and working part-time in a luxurious hotel on special occasions. A young man named Jay (who used to live in London and cant speak Hindi) visits the hotel where Trishna works with his friends and likes her. They gives a lift to Trishna and her friends and thus knows her house. Next day, Trishna and her father faces an accident which paralyze her father.  On their way back to home, Jay offers Trishna a job at his father’s hotel, which he is taking care of right now.

Few days later, he sends a letter to Trishna’s father stating the formal job proposal for Trishna. This changes her life. She accepts that job and moves to that hotel which was on another state. While working there, Trishna receives special attention and care from Jay. One night, Jay saves Trishna from some eve teasers and takes her to a garden and kisses her (at least, this was shown on the screen).

On the next morning, Trishna leaves the hotel and comes back to her home. She starts feeling morning sickness after a few days. Her family takes her to a hospital and the doctor finds that she was pregnant. Then she has an abortion. After getting well, she starts working on her uncle’s factory.

In the meantime, Jay goes to her home and from there, he gets the address of Trishna’s uncle’s factory where she was working then. He goes there and asks Trishna to move in with her in the city and Trishna agrees. Trishna leaves her current job just then and moves into Jay’s apartment. They starts living as lovers. At that time Jay was busy in making a movie with his friends. Trishna enjoys living there and starts to go to a dance class.

On day, Jay’s father falls sick in London and Jay goes to London to visit him, leaving Trishna alone in the apartment. While he was there, the lease of that apartment gets expired and Trishna moves into her friend’s apartment. When Jay comes back to Trishna, he had to take care of his father’s hotel again and Trishna goes back to her life as a hotel waitress.

Day by day, Jay becomes more aggressive and forces Trishna to have sex with him. He reads the books of ‘Kama Sutra’ and does the experiments on Trishna. He starts to use her to fulfill his abusive fantasies against her will. His abusive behavior grows more than what Trishna can tolerate, so one day she tries to take her fate in her own hand.

My Reviews about the movie Trishna:

First of all, I’d say, I loved this movie.

The plot of Trishna is very good and realistic. It tells the story of an ambitious girl and what may happen to her if she runs after her ambitions blindly. It also shows us how a man can behave if he thinks he completely owns a girl. Although the ending is a little dramatic, but it is very much attached to the real world. The direction and screenplay of the movie seemed top-class. 

I’ve written the plot of Trishna is realistic, but still I’ve found some small scenarios in this movie which doesn’t fit, specially for a rural Indian society. For example, when Trishna came back to her village for the first time from the hotel job, she was pregnant and she had an abortion. But none of her family members questioned her about it (as shown on this movie) and all of them seemed okay about it. This will never happen in an Indian society. Another time, when she left her job at her uncle’s factory to move in with Jay, she left just then without any further thinking (not thinking about her family or paralyzed father or anything else ), which also looked unrealistic to me.

Acting of all the characters is good enough. Remember, this movie is completely focused on Trishna which makes all other characters side characters. And Freida Pinto has done an awesome job of acting here. Her beautiful face and acting has blended perfectly with her character in this movie. I think only a very few Indian actresses could be matched in this movie this much. The acting of the other characters is satisfactory. Same goes for make-up, no excess use of glamour was seen in Trishna, which keep the quality of this movie intact.

The director has also done a praiseworthy job of choosing the locations in this movie. The parts involving Trishna’s village is shot in a very rural area where the hotels used in this movie are gorgeous. They match perfectly to the plot of this movie.  

Although there was no direct nudity seen in this movie, but for the subject, this movie is not appropriate for kids.

So, overall, I’d say, Trishna is a nice piece of work, specially for the fans of drama movies. Although from time to time this movie plays a romantic note, but it is nowhere near a typical drama movie. I believe, anyone will enjoy watching Trishna.

What are your opinions about this one? Feel free to share in comments.

If you are interested:

IMDB link :  Trishna IMDB

Wikipedia link : Trishna Wiki

To buy or rent this movie from Amazon, or to watch online, click here:  Trishna Movie