Review No.141: Trishna

I think you're always going to struggle with literary snobbishness if you try to update a classic text into a modern day setting for you film but it's been done a lot from Emma being turned into Clueless to recently From the Madding Crowd turned into Tamara Drewe. We have another Hardy adaptation next with prolific director Michael Winterbottom, who most recently directed the controversial The Killer Inside Me, adapting Tess of the D'Urbervilles and setting in modern-day India with Trishna. Freida Pinto plays the title character and Tess substitute who is a young girl growing up in a small village whose father works transporting various goods in his Jeep however when it gets into an accident Trishna is forced to take work elsewhere. Help comes in the form of Jay whose English family run a chain of hotels and he organises Trishna a job in one of these as the two slowly form a romantic bond however when it becomes too much for her she runs away. To make more money for her family she works for her uncle and aunt on their farm however eventually Jay tracks her down before convincing her to join him in Mumbai where he is now working as a financier of Bollywood movies. The next part of the story sees Trishna learn to be a Bollywood dancer and demonstrates the difference between the traditional India of her family and the modern-day India in the city where she and Jay eventually share a very swish apartment. However anyone who knows the text knows that the central female character can't stay happy for too long and when Jay's father suffers a stroke she travels back to the hotel with him only to find out that their relationship is very different there than it was in Mumbai.

Michael Winterbottom is an interesting director and you just have to look at his last two works, the aforementioned Killer Inside Me and the Steve Coogan/Rob Brydon sitcom The Trip, to know that he doesn't have once specific style. Trishna's comparisons to Tess are mainly in it's central character the poor innocent farm girl who is tempted by the promise of great things by the man in her life but ultimately things fall flat. The interesting thing with Trishna is that the two male protagonists of the Hardy text, Angel Clare and Alec D'Urberville, are combined into one here with Jay representing both the kindly saviour and the wicked rich boy in equal measure which is a bold move and is one that is likely to upset literary purists. What I enjoyed most of Trishna was that Winterbottom covered all aspects of India from the poor village life to the hotels which house the affluent westerners to the bustling streets of Mumbai and the sweaty pulsating sets of the Bollywood film industry. I real felt that Marcel Zyskind's cinematography transported you to each of these places and made you part of the action as best he could. I also thought that this was Freida Pinto's best performance since Slumdog Millionaire, though she wasn't give much to do in either Black Gold or Rise of the Planet of the Apes, here playing a delicate innocent flower who is overwhelmed by the various pleasures that Jay can offer but ultimately comes to the realisation that she can't trust everybody. Riz Ahmed tries his best with the multi-dimensional character of Jay easily conveying the charming man but struggling with playing the more despicable elements of the script in the latter third of the film. My main problem with Trishna was the episodic nature with some of the parts of her tale not being as interesting as others plus I didn't buy the transition of Jay's character so maybe it was  a mistake to combine Angel and Alec into one. Overall there is much to enjoy in Trishna however I didn't really get into it as much as I could've though this isn't the fault of the wonderful camera-work or Pinto's brilliant central performance. I think maybe my lack of enjoyment came from knowing what was coming next, having studied Tess at A-Level, so maybe Winterbottom should've messed around with the text a little more than just combining the two central male characters into one confusing amalgamation.

Verdict: Wonderful shots of India and an assured central performance from Pinto are spoilt by the film's somewhat confusing episodic nature so for that reason I will give Trishna 6/10

Review No.99: Black Gold

Ever since Ridley Scott reinvented the old-school epic with Gladiator many people have tried to recreate his success with differing results from Oliver Stone's Alexander to Scott's own Kingdom of Heaven. The latest director to try his hand at creating an epic of sorts is Jean-Jacques Annaud, most famous for helming Seven Years in Tibet, who has presented a tale of feuding Sultans in 1920s Arabia entitled Black Gold. The film is based around a border dispute between Antonio Banderas' Emir Nesib and Mark Strong's Sultan Amar although they briefly settle their conflict as insurance Nesib takes both of Amar's sons. As this is the 1920s it's not long before the Texans turn up wanting to drill for oil in Nesib's area so he allows them to using the money to modernise the area building up hospitals, schools and a library where Amar's son Auda, now played by Tahir Rahim, works as he is a bookish chap. Nesib later wants to unite the two families so has Auda marry his daughter Leyla, played by Freida Pinto, both then journey to try and broker a deal with Amar. Amar's feelings about the oil are different to that of his rival and he feels that the land shouldn't be modernised in the way that Nesib has done this eventually leads to  a conflict with Auda leading several of the rival tribes to rebel against Nesib. Essentially this sees a man torn between two father figures, between being a scholar or a warrior and also fighting against the father of his true love.

From watching Black Gold it seemed to me that Annaud's main goal was to make everything look as dazzling as possible and to an extent he's done this. The decision to film primarily in Tunisia and Qatar makes the whole thing seem realistic while Jean-Marie Dreujou's cinematography perfectly captures the thrilling battle sequences in the latter part of the film as does the multi-coloured robes worn by the main characters. The epics of old also had memorable scores and while James Horner does a good job for me it doesn't live up to the greatness of Maurice Jarre's Lawrence of Arabia script. The main problem with Black Gold though is that it's just a bit dull with long speeches about border disputes and family traditions all I really wanted to see was more of the characters riding around on their horses or Freida Pinto's pretty smile. While I'm on the cast the only person who really made an impression on me was Mark Strong who is ever-reliable here as the long-in-the-tooth Amar he plays it just right as opposed to Banderas who goes a bit pantomime whenever he's on screen. Pinto and Riz Ahmed make good accounts of themselves whenever they're on screen however I was a bit disappointed by Rahim's contribution, especially when we remind ourselves how good he was in A Prophet, but maybe that's the fault of the script not creating a better role for him to sink his teeth into. Black Gold by no means is a poorly made film however it suffers from long speeches and tired clichés while having some cast members who don't try hard enough and some that go way over the top.

Verdict: Despite some decent cinematography and a hefty performance from Strong most of Black Gold is fairly dull and for that reason I'll only give it 5/10