TRAPPED (2017)
Directed By: Vikramaditya Motwane
Written By:
Amit Joshi, Hardik Mehta
Starring: Rajkummar Rao, Geetanjali Thapa
There. The opening shot. An arched back, head
lowered, mind confused, tongue silent and heart aching. I see him trapped. There. The emblem of a
teenager. Dazzling beauty, throbbing blood pumps, nervous sensations, stupid
ice-breakers and overwhelming expectations. I see him trapped. The film shows us a guy being trapped in an apartment at a
new, isolated building. On a deeper level, it’s just a clear shadow of our
hungry life and a body whose evolved, barbaric mind is trapped by filthy
thrills.
It’s not about the final fruits of the labor we put
through in life, but about breaking through the doors of obstacles, that
hinders our forward motion. That it’s about breaking through the inhibition of
talking to that girl, whose image occupied Shaurya’s (Rajkumar Rao) mind, day
and night. It’s about reaching the final moment of the realization, that though
she was about to marry someone else, he stripped his mind naked and became her
one true love. In Vikramaditya Motwane’s (Director) other film (Udaan) as well, the protagonist – Rohan, breaks through the paralyzing and
lonely outbursts of his father and runs away to a new, independent life (I envy
the ending of that movie).
The story becomes clear just from the trailer. What
you want to see in the theatre is the artwork of the film crew, rapid montages
of struggle and the acting prowess of our emotionally charged – Hero. For a
low-budget motion picture, the lighting zone comes as a challenge. But our
financially strapped cinematographer
(Siddharth Diwan), has shot the movie with such a zeal that you get the feel of
a cinematic world, observed by an outsider’s eyes. Nothing superfluous, yet
everything subtle and proper. The direction and screenplay was a delight to
bear. It had the juices of an aching tale and vision of a dynamic storyteller.
Here’s a problem though. We see this man, gradually being directed by his
subconscious and revolving around thirst and hunger to overcome the loneliness
of an evident death in an estranged flat. Scenes where he loses the odds of
complacency and performs unnatural acts, or in truth-natural to the core, could
have been focused with brighter instincts. When a human is deranged to the
extent that he draws his blood out for an SOS message, or abandons his
religious principles to survive on roasted pigeons, or hell, even drink his own
urine, the scenes should have been able to bring an “Oh Man!” exclamation to my
neighbor, whose giggles erupted continually while watching our subject struggle
through the real-life Man Vs. Wild, scenario. Perhaps, my neighbor was actually
scared the entire time. Or perhaps, my quest for perfection has turned me into
an unrequited movie lover.
Psychedelia has answers unknown to us. Our brief
intro in this absurd world is a conundrum in itself. So much so, that when
death was a fist apart, Shaurya is tempted to FEEL the mundane. He wanted to
FEEL the sweaty, damp air betwixt people in the local metro. He wanted to
FEEL the taste of the butter-fixated palatable snack. He wanted to FEEL the
life with his lover. These hallucinations became so strong that the tragic end
of his love life, gave him a purpose much stronger than that of broken
promises. I can fairly assume that he began watching a new film through his
eyes, post his odyssey’s greatest epiphany. The title of the movie – Life: À la carte.
