Trapped Overview

                                       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.