Based on Thomas Hardy’s classic novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Trishna is a beautifully shot, classic tale of love and tragedy set across modern day rural Rajasthan and the thriving metropolis of Mumbai.
Trishna (Freida Pinto) meets a wealthy young British businessman, Jay Singh (Riz Ahmed), who has come to India to work in his father’s hotel business. After an accident destroys her father’s Jeep, Trishna goes to work for Jay, and they fall in love. But despite their feelings for each other, their relationship must remain a secret due to the conflicting pressures of a rural society which is changing rapidly through industrialisation, urbanisation and, above all, education.
Their problems seem to be solved when Jay takes Trishna to an exciting new world of dance, vibrant life and possibilities – Mumbai. But Trishna harbours a dark secret that threatens the very heart of their love affair, and inequalities remain at the centre of their relationship that will lead her to question Jay’s intentions towards her.
Director Michael Winterbottom says he first had the idea of making Trishna eight or nine years ago. “We were working on a film called Code 46 and we shot for a few days in Rajasthan,” he says in the film’s production notes.
“We visited the desert outside Osian. I was with some crew from Mumbai, and there was an incredible contrast between the life of the crew from Mumbai and the people of the village, whose lives were just beginning to change with the forces of mechanisation, industrialisation, urbanisation and, above all, education.”
This contrast reminded him of Hardy, and in particular Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Hardy, the director says, was describing a similar moment in English life.
“Tess is a character who has more education than her parents, who doesn’t speak the local dialect like her parents, who feels slightly set apart from the other dairy maids she works with and can dream of a better life. Tess’s tragedy is that she has one foot in the fixed, old rural world, and one foot in the new, mobile, urban world,” he concludes, reflecting the dil-emma faced by Pinto’s character in Trishna.
Trishna shows at St James Cavalier, Valletta, tomorrow at 3 pm; Thursday at 6.30 pm; Saturday at 3pm and February 19- 21, and 23 at 8.45 pm.
www.sjcav.org