Trance Review: The Film Sweeps Us Into A World Of Depraved Exploitation; Fahadh Fasil Shows Some Real Acting

The review of the Malayalam Netflix film Trance is finally out! Read on to know more about the film directed by Anwar Rasheed. The film stars Fahadh Faasil in a pivotal role. It also features Dileesh Pothan, Nazriya Nazim, Gautham Menon and others.

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Trance Review: The Film Sweeps Us Into A World Of Depraved Exploitation; Fahadh Fasil Shows Some Real Acting

Given the current bleakness all around us, we have every reason to abhor this film on the most evil practice  of organized  religion  that God NEVER invented. Trance, the latest Malayalam film, directed by Anwar Rasheed, to  prove Kerala’s supremacy in powerful  ceiling-shattering  content and  performances is a  pioneering  achievement, tearing as  it does into the innards  of fake religiosity  where billions of bucks are generated by exploiting the weak and the vulnerable and where faith is forever flogged to death.

With a towering performance by Fahadh Faasil in the lead, Trance sweeps us into a world of depraved exploitation. Parts of the plot are purely pulp. But then what is wrong with pulp when it suits the narrative’s purposes so well?

The  lengthy  film of almost 3 hours, begins like  a desi Rain Man with  Fawad’s petty  motivational-speaker  character Viju Prasad  looking after  his psychologically disturbed suicidal brother(Sreenath Bhasi). It then veers  viciously into  a  brown man's  version  of Jane Campion’s  Holy Smoke where  Viju is trapped into doing a staged  (fake) holy miracles.

The exploitation of  religious sentiments  earlier done  half-heartedly in Hindi films like  OMG and  PK is  stripped of all veneer of politeness. What we see  is a group of  avaricious power brokers setting up  con-props for a world hungering for change. The villainous caucus(played by Tamil filmmaker Gautham Menon,  Dileesh Pothan, Chemban Vinod  Jose)  lack finesse  in  characterization and  portrayal. They could be a trio of villains in any film about crime and punishment.

It  doesn’t take  long for us to realize  that the campy villains  are seen to be  part  of the  larger drama  of grotesquerie that  the sprawling  plot  systematically dismantles.  Standing at the centre of   the diabolic debris is Fahaad Faasil. Magnificently asked and off-beam, he sweeps all the jerkiness in the narration under the carpet making us look not at the faults(albeit glaring) but the larger  picture of merchandised religiosity.

Nazriya Nazeem provides some romantic succour to the battered hero very late in the film. She  comes in  at a time when Viju  now transformed to Pastor Joshua Carlton is plunging into the abyss. The last half an hour where  the parody pastor must perform a  holy miracle to wake up a dead child, reminded me of Dev Anand at the end of Guide.

Some miracles are just not destined to happen. Trance is not one of them.



Image source: IMDb