FILM REVIEW: TRISHNA

Trishna (Frieda Pinto) in Trishna.

Another Tess of time and place

By Ed Rampell

English filmmaker Michael Winterbottom has adapted his countryman Thomas Hardy’s 1891 novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented, which mostly takes place in 19^th century rural Britain. In Winterbottom’s updated version, Tess becomes Trishna and the film is set in contemporary India, with a mostly Indian cast, starring the preternaturally beautiful Freida Pinto (the female lead in 2009’s Best Picture Oscar winner, Slumdog Millionaire) in the title role.

Adaptations can be risky business. The good news is that Winterbottom’s reworking of Hardy’s classic is inspired. His update hews somewhat close to Hardy in terms of plot, but is especially true thematically, more faithful to the original in spirit than in letter.

The changes currently sweeping India parallel those in Hardy’s novel set against the backdrop of England’s 19^th century industrial revolution, as economic upheavals forced the peasantry away from the countryside and into the cities. Trishna (Pinto, arguably motion pictures’ prettiest actress today) is a simple country girl whose beauty attracts Jay (as in Gatsby!)Singh, the son of an upper class family of Indian ancestry who has lived abroad. Jay is depicted by Oxford educated Riz Ahmed, who is of Indian/Pakistani heritage and starred as Shafiq Rasul, one of the railroaded Tipton Three in Winterbottom’s 2006 searing indictment of torture, The Road to Guantanamo.

Besotted by Trishna’s beauty, Jay pursues her, using his class advantages to lure her away from her ancestral village in Rajasthan, first to a luxury resort owned by his worldly wise if blind father (Roshan Seth). But the hotel biz is not for Jay; as he has show biz aspirations Jay moves to Bombay (Mumbai), where he and Trishna can live openly as an unmarried couple. The couple gets involved in Bollywood, but as one artist points out, Jay’s main talent is that his father is rich.

Trishna, on the other hand, not only has beauty, but can dance, and it seems as if this slumdog might become a millionaire by appearing in Bollywood musicals. But talentless Jay, who wants to keep her all to himself, discourages her. As a lower class -- or caste -- female Trishna is curiously passive. The story shows how in patriarchal society, all too often young women have little recourse for social advancement other than their looks, sexuality and youth. A tragic predicament, to be sure, especially in pre-feminist developing nations (although India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have all had female heads of government and of state, while America is yet to have a woman president, so perhaps our ladies are not that much freer than their Third World sisters?).

Complications ensue and the couple must relocate to another one of Jay’s family’s resorts in the countryside, where social mores are more traditional and out-of-wedlock relationships are taboo. The property formerly was a palace, and Jay is ensconced in the bedroom of a medieval maharajah who had about 18 concurrent concubines. Meanwhile, it never seems to occur to Jay to wed his social “inferior” Trishna, who must pretend to be just another servant girl, as she becomes the Kama Sutra-reading hotelier’s virtual sex slave. Sometimes, beauty can be a curse.

The uprooted, cosmopolitan Jay seems to yearn for what he supposes is Trishna’s simplicity, rooted in ancient Indian culture. On the other hand, Trishna sees in Jay her entrée -- or, more crudely put -- ticket to that modern world beckoning to India’s rural masses, as urbanization, outsourcing and the like rock their age-old society. They are caught between two worlds. Opposites may attract, but they can also repel. Trishna’s humble origins have denied her an education, but beneath her passivity a fire is being stoked. Unable to verbally express herself, let’s just say that all hell breaks loose.

D.W. Griffith believed film photographs thought, and the Pinto wears her character’s inner life upon the sleeve of her exquisite face. She is such a natural thespian that we can virtually read her mind in close ups, an expressively eloquent actress in the tradition of the great silent screen artistes, like Mae Marsh and Lillian Gish. In films such as 2010’s Miral and Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, whether playing an oppressed Palestinian or a London beauty who bewitches Josh Brolin’s married writer, Pinto demonstrates a range and depth. Imparting a Third World aesthetic on the screen, the Bombay-born actress and former model heralds a breakthrough in world cinema.

Winterbottom’s relocating of Tess of the d'Urbervilles to India is an eureka! movie moment, enhanced by its on location shooting in the subcontinent. To paraphrase Mel Brooks, I extend a laurel and Thomas Hardy handshake to Winterbottom.

 

  

  

 

THEATER REVIEW: THE INDIANS ARE COMING

Woo (Peter Chen) in The Indians are Coming.

Rowland out the punches

By Ed Rampell

There is a saying that “the personal is political,” and playwright Jennifer Rowland does a skillful job interweaving private lives with public service in The Indians Are Coming To Dinner. The Indians in the title refers to people from India, not America’s indigenous people.

Rowland’s tragicomedy is set during the Reagan era, wherein stage and big and little screen veteran Michael Rothhaar plays Harold Blackburn, an archetypal WASPy upper class Republican. Harold laments having been pushed as a young man by his domineering late father (whose portrait dominates Tom Buderwitz’s set and which lighting designer Leigh Allen highlights throughout the action) to abandoned an alluring State Department career to go into the family business. After years of running this reasonably prosperous if dull company, Harold receives intimations that the reelected Ronald Reagan is considering tapping Harold to become Our Man in India. Following Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination, it’s believed that the Reagan regime requires an extremely talented diplomat to represent Washington at New Delhi.

Harold gets it into his head that he’s just the man for the job, and his youthful dreams of diplomacy and a life abroad in the Foreign Service return and reanimate him. So being a Reaganite, Harold sets out to secure his overseas sinecure by, naturally, politicking, and schemes to make a good impression on his old friend Anil (Kevin Vavasseur), who is visiting the States with his family. Harold believes this distant relation of the Gandhis is extremely influential in India, and a kingmaker vis-avis vetting Harold for the post he’s now yearning for.

To make his ambassadorial aspirations come true, the whiskered, rotund Harold buffoonishly garbs himself in an outrageous outfit befitting a maharajah, conjured up by costume designer by whimsical Audrey Eisner. The man who would be ambassador impresses his family and servant into service in order to create a feast designed to impress Anil. Of course, this would-be banquet provides the play’s comic pratfalls. Along the way, Harold – who prides himself on being considered not just a good, but “a great guy” – reveals his true stripes as a petty tyrant. He coerces dutiful Nora-like wife Lynn (Sara Newman-Martins) and faithful servant Woo (the droll Peter Chen) into concocting cuisine with an Indian flare in order to literally curry favor. Hippy dippy son Christopher (Justin Preston), a high school student who has been, shall we say, Bogarting that joint, my friends, is imposed upon to attend the repast.

So is daughter Alexandra (the gifted Thea Rubley), who has flown home to San Francisco from her college to pursue her dream of becoming an opera singer by trying out at a hard to get into audition, which could lead to going to Italy and the launching of her singing career. Operatic music is a recurring theme in Indians; Harold is a big fan of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto, the first opera Harold shared with Alexandra when she was a little girl.

But the monomaniacal Harold selfishly believes that his daughter has crossed the continent solely to partake of the all important dinner aimed at buttering Anil up so that he’ll give the nod to Reagan to send the Blackburns globetrotting off to India. Does Harold subvert Alexandra’s dreams, just as his patriarch had done to him? Does Harold do to Alexandra what the hunchbacked Rigoletto inadvertently did to his daughter, Gilda?

Rowland has written a clever, resonant, sly script. When Harold finally gets down to brass tacks and confronts Anil about the ambassadorial endorsement he’s seeking, Anil’s reaction is a plot twist this reviewer didn’t see coming. The stuff that dreams are made of!

Julia Fletcher ably directs this world premiere production that deserves life beyond a small Venice playhouse. Burderwitz’s split level set is imaginative as it divides the spatial – and emotional – spaces of the play up. Chen subtly spoofs “Oriental” screen and stage stereotypes, just as Vavasseur and Rikin Vasani (as Anil’s son Deepok) provide some instant comic karma by poking fun at the “enlightened” spirituality of Eastern religion. When, like Ibsen’s Nora, Newman-Martins at long last has her Doll’s House moment, she too shakes off the caricature of the long suffering wife who silently suffers as a mere extension of her husband. There’s more to Lynn, after all, than being mere comic relief.    

Rubley is a real standout; not only is the recent USC grad a fine actress with promise, but she has the lovely singing voice her character requires in order to convey the role’s authenticity. As Harold, Rothhaar convincingly portrays a man who is a needy, bundle of contradictions, who -- with youthful dreams thwarted -- grasps once more for that elusive brass ring as old age approaches. Rothhaar’s Harold has an air not unlike that other salesman, Arthur Miller’s immortal, yet all too human, Willy Loman. Alas, as Harold seeks to have attention paid to him, Harold is the low man on these Indians’ totem pole. But he should not despair: If New Delhi eludes him, there will always be a role for Harold as one of Reagan’s mass murderers in his Central American Contra war. Beside, as we see in this comedy drama about foiled fantasies of what one could have been had he/she remained true unto his/her own self, there are more ways to kill sopranos than with bullets.


The Indians Are Coming To Dinner runs through March 25 at Pacific Resident Theatre, 703 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291. For info: call (310)822-8392 or see www.PacificResidentTheatre.com.

HOLLYWOOD BRAZILIAN 2011: BOLLYWOOD DREAM

A scene from Bollywood Dream.

Open up

By Don Simpson

Sofia (Nataly Cabanas), Ana (Paula Braun), Luna (Lorena Lobato) are unemployed Brazilian actresses with families whom they need to support. They travel to India to work in cinema...but, as far as airport customs knows, this trip is purely a spiritual journey. Upon arrival, Sofia, Ana and Luna discover that their hotel reservation has been cancelled; so they haggle the price of another hotel so low that it is difficult not to wonder if karma will come back to bite them.

The three Brazilian actresses are in search of a Bollywood producer, but he is not at the address listed on his business card. Not ones to give up very easily, they recruit a young dance instructor (Mohana Krishna) and an actress (Geetha Satish) to coach them until their big Bollywood break comes along. Sofia, Ana and Luna are prone to arguing and haggling and find themselves repeatedly clashing with Indian culture. Their difficult struggle to find their way commences, but their way does not follow the same meandering path as their destiny. No matter how hard they fight it, their destiny always prevails over their way. Maybe they should not have lied to airport customs after all -- perhaps this is a spiritual awakening?

Writer-director Beatriz Seigner’s Bollywood Dream is a colorful and musical meditation on three Brazilian women who find themselves far away from their native land. Seigner showcases the drastic cultural differences between Brazilians and Indians, but there does appear to be one similarity: the exploitation of women in the entertainment industry. It seems as though actresses are viewed as sexual objects even in Bollywood. What on earth would Radha have to say about that?

SFIFF 2011: MARATHON BOY

A scene from Marathon Boy.

Run, Budhia, run

By Don Simpson

What were you doing with your life when you were three years old? Well, I doubt you were running 13-mile half-marathons like Budhia Singh. I certainly was not.

Born in 2002 in the slums of Bhubaneswar (in the eastern Indian state of Orissa), Singh's mother sold him off at an early age to a peddler for 800 rupees. Then Biranchi Das, a renowned judo teacher, bought Singh to save him from the abusive peddler. Das raised Singh along with several other young kids in his Judo Hall orphanage.

Upon punishing Singh one day by making him run laps around the Judo Hall courtyard, Das discovered Singh's amazing stamina as a runner. Das appointed himself as Singh’s coach and they commenced an arduous training regimen. 

When documentary filmmaker Gemma Atwal begins filming the three-year-old Singh, he has already completed six half-marathons. By the age of four, Singh has already completed countless full-length (26-mile) marathons. Das then arranges for Singh to run 42 miles from from the Chapandie temple to Bhubaneshwar. Singh instantly emerges as a national superstar, even a hero of sorts. But Singh's fame incites a rabid debate. Half-marathons and full-marathons are one thing, but 42 miles is another. Is this exploitation or philanthropy? Is this child abuse or is Das merely providing Singh with a rare opportunity to further develop his inherent skill and become famous? The Indian government and social services pounce on the high profile case and suddenly the entire situation spirals wildly out of control. Singh soon finds his dream to "run all the way to the Olympics" at risk of being spoiled by the corruption and greed of adults.

Marathon Boy began in 2005 as a curiosity study focusing on Singh's relationship with Das; but after five years of filming, the story develops into something significantly larger. Atwal finds herself in the middle of a controversy that escalates exponentially each and every frame. This Dickensian tale translates directly to the fanatical exploitation of young children in Western cultures. Be it music, athletics, modeling or acting, children's parents plop their kids into seriously (and stressfully) competitive situations at what often seems like far too early of an age. It is one thing when the children choose that way of life, but another when adults force it upon them. 

(It also begs the questions: At what age do human beings become rational enough to be able to make that kind of decision? And until that rationality is developed, what decisions should guardians be allowed to make for the children they are responsible for?)

Soon the kids are generating more income than their parents, yet where their income is going often becomes questionable. Of course, if there is one thing to take away from Marathon Boy, the debate is not quite as black and white as it would seem.

Marathon Boy screens April 29, 2:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki Cinemas; April 30, 1 p.m., New People; May 3, 9:15 p.m., Sundance Kabuki Cineamas; For more information: MB.