Trance is about of Viju Prasad (Fahadh Faasil). He is a troubled man, but a man with big dreams. At the beginning of the film, he conducts workshops outside his working hours at a local restaurant, for people who need some kind of motivation in their lives to move on, the irony being he needs it more.
Soon we are introduced to his younger brother Kunjan (Sreenath Bhasi) a troubled guy again, on medication to keep his depression in check. The brothers try to overcome the dents their mother’s suicide has created in their lives, the elder looking out for the younger, until the latter decides to go on a long journey like their mother.
A dejected Viju who is also deeply affected by his circumstances, tries to keep himself motivated by the speel he gives his clients to get through the day, everyday. He is the little boy who was never consoled, never cried, had to be grow up soon for the sake of looking after his younger brother. We see the chinks in our protagonist, and wait for the moment he may break. His dreams of making it big with his workshops is one such hope he feeds himself. As an audience we know that would require a miracle seeing his current clientele!
The first half of Trance shows Viju’s that miracle in action. He is hired by top brass Solomon Davis (Gautam Vasudev Menon) and Isaac Thomas (Chemban Jose) on the recommendation of Kavitha (Aswathi Menon), a film casting agent in Mumbai to mint money using people’s addiction and recourse to religion, miracle workers and godmen & women. He is trained by Avarachan (Dileesh Pothan) to be renamed as Pastor Joshua Carlton, the face of their new venture. They bank on his training, charisma, the drugs to keep him hyperactive and an atmosphere their backend team creates to gain followers and a worldwide reach. And they do.
Viju’s world changes from the terraces and kaccha lanes of a quiet seaside town of Kanyakumari to the glitz, glamour, a world of showmanship & limelight of Joshua Carlton, JC for short speaking to auditoriums jam packed with ‘followers’ who line up to listen to him. Gradually, he begins to believe in the lies he creates through his performance like he used to feed himself his motivational speeches forgetting he is only a member of a well planned scheme to fool people. The remaining half of Trance reveals the back stories, issues of mental health, drug abuse, and the underbelly of the making of this image, and its aftermath. It is slower than the first, but a needed explanation to the crisp first half that kept us on a rush.
I half expected somebody in the audience to shout Hallelujah mersmerised by Fahad’s act, that is how real this entire project is, like the cricket match is in Lagaan. This Anwar Rasheed team of Vincent Vadakkan, Sushin Shyam, Jackson Vijayan, Amal Neerad, Rasool Pookutty, Praveen Prabhakar, Ajayan Challissery and the actors have delivered a delicious film about a current problem we are facing that takes advantage of the gullibility of people for their business gains.
The film will immediately strike a cord with anybody who is fed up with the industry of gods, human gods, and any kind of stubborn belief in isms, products, fashion and people who are so mersmerised by the idea advertised that they listen to no reason. They have used Christianity as a token idea to make people aware of a darker side to these popular influential people and products about blindly following any such. But it is bound to get brickbacks from the people who are living this life, we need to see if the audience keeps coming to the theatre after the first over booked weekend.
With the kind of ending Trance signed off with, it brings in a kind of closure to the story of Viju Prasad making it a bildungsroman. This gives us Fahadh Faasil at his best. But I would have preferred the film packing up when JC faded away into smoke the last time he was on stage, making it open ended for the sake of a mystery, much like the other inconclusive tidbits in the film that will keep us wondering if they were all an act or for real? Or done in a state of trance 🙃
The film also stars Nazriya Nazim, Arjun Ashokan, Soubin Shahir, Vinayakan, Jins Joseph, Srinda and Joju George.
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