Trishna.

British born director Michael Winterbottom is famous for working across a great deal of genres. Looking down his film credits its quite surprising (1) how many films he has actually made (2) the diversity and variety of these films. His latest movie is his third adaptation of a Thomas Hardy novel. The first was Jude (1996) based on Jude the Obscure; he followed this with The Claim (2000), which transposed The Mayor of Casterbridge to the 1860’s Californian gold rush. The third film is Trishna (2011) adapted from Tess of the d’Urbervilles and set in modern contempory India rather than Hardy’s familiar stomping ground, Wessex.

Will this passionate lover affair survive? 

Trishna (Slumdog Millionaires Freida Pinto) is a young girl from an impoverished rural background in Rajasthan who meets a privileged well educated young British businessman Jay Singh, played by Riz Ahmed who was much more effective in Chris Morris’s Four Lions (2010), returning to India to work in one of his fathers many hotel businesses. When an accident destroys Trishna’s family livelihood she goes to work for Jay and the pair fall in love.  Because they are defying traditional Indian convention they run away to Mumbai, one of the only places in India they can live out a normal relationship. But of course you just know it will all end in tears?

Freida pinto plays Trishna.........

....with Jay Singh portrayed by Riz Ahmed.

This in fact is one of the problems with Winterbottom’s movie, it’s narrative is so obvious you just know well in advance what’s about to happen. Combine that with a weak storyline that does not really exploit the story’s big question: can a relationship be based on beauty alone or will it always descend from superficial love into a potentially destructive sexual relationship, Hardy obviously thought so, unconvincing acting and its need of a stronger female lead sums up the difficulty I had with this movie. On the plus side its an ideal setting for the adaptation, contrasting the two entirely differing worlds of traditional and modern contempory India. Marcel Zyskind’s photography is excellent giving great visual imaginary to the whole thing and the soundtrack especially written for the film does add to the narrative. But a somewhat disappointing outing for Winterbottom.

Rise of The Planet of The Apes.

The original Planet of The Apes was released in 1968 and told the story of how a space ship crash-landed on a strange planet in the distant future. The planet appeared at first to be uninhabited but the three surviving crewmembers stumble upon a society in which apes had evolved into intelligent creatures. These human like apes are now the dominant species with the original humans dressed in animal skins and mute! This story was based on a 1963 French novel La Planete des Singes by Pierre Boulle and the movie was directed by Tokyo born Franklin J Schaffner whose oeuvre includes Patton (1970) and The Boys From Brazil (1978). The main recognisable face in this original movie was the gun loving Charlton Heston who was mainly known for appearances in historical epics like Ben-Hur (1959) and The Ten Commandments (1956). After re watching this film I can’t imagine why it’s ranked as a “classic”? It has a slow plodding story line that seems to take for ever to get to the point, its completely devoid of excitement in fact it’s tedious, the budget appears non existent and as for Heston himself, a wooded post would have more personality and come to think of it have more acting prowess. Four more films followed in this particular franchise and judging by the trailers were worse than the initial film.

They have now rebooted the franchise with the recent release of a prequel Rise of The Planet of The Apes (2011). Directed by the 38 year old British born American resident Rupert Wyatt whose previous film was his debut Escapist (2008) it starred Brian Cox who played a convict 12 years into a life sentence with no hope of parole.  He develops an ingenious escape plan to allow him to regain contact with his estranged daughter who has fallen ill, recruiting a desperate band of fellow prisoners to help in his endeavours.  That film had a brilliant structure and a clever narrative.

Andy Serkis!

Wyatt’s new film challenges the reason for the downfall of mankind intimated in the original 1968 version. This time it’s not an arms race that places the apes in the ascendancy but mankind’s quest to discover a drug to cure Alzheimer’s. Scientist Will Rodman (James Franco) develops a gene-therapy drug to repair the human brain. His main guinea pig is an ape called Bright Eyes and when she runs amok every one assumes it’s the effects of the drugs and the trials are cancelled. Rodman soon discovers that Bright Eyes is pregnant and that she was only protecting her newly born child. He then proceeds to take the infant home and names him Caesar. As the youngster grows up he begins to show a high intelligence level and this is when our story really begins.

Freida Pinto and James Franco.

Using modern technology known as performance or motion capture which refers to recording actions of human actors, and using that information to animate digital characters meant that Andy Serkis could play Caesar without resorting to an hairy ape costume. The same technology allowed him to play King Kong (2005) and Gollum in the Lord of The Rings Franchise. What a difference 43 years makes? We now have an example of first class escapist entertainment with never a dull moment. The movie’s just the right length, has some decent acting from our two main stars also from Freida Pinto and Brian Cox, obviously a sizable budget and a very engaging storyline. It may be too late to see it at your local cinema but I imagine it we be available on DVD fairly soon.