Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

Dan­ny Boyle's riv­et­ing thriller, Trance, is a ter­rif­ic ex­am­ple of how tal­ent, wit, and skill can trans­form a cou­ple of loaves and fish­es in­to a feast for a mul­ti­tude. It's a not-so-orig­i­nal sto­ry about an art heist, an am­nesic thief, and a be­guil­ing hyp­nother­a­pist, played by the mes­meris­ing Rosario Daw­son.In brief, wit­less ban­dit steals paint­ing, gets knocked on the head, for­gets where it is, ran­dom­ly se­lects a hyp­nother­a­pist when MRIs and neu­rol­o­gy fail, and she helps him re­mem­ber.

The cast is small, the sit­u­a­tions are large­ly con­fined to apart­ments, roofs, lone­ly roads, emp­ty park­ing garages and aban­doned ware­hous­es.The num­ber of scenes re­quir­ing crowds and elab­o­rate sets is small, and the cam­era, the script, and the ac­tors shoul­der the task of draw­ing the view­er through the ex­hil­a­rat­ing de­noue­ment.

Trance spends a small part of its re­sources on the stolen art (Goya's Witch­es in the Air, if you're in­to that sort of thing), which mo­tif would have added much to the movie. Much of its re­sources are ex­pend­ed fol­low­ing a bunch of thugs scheme about how to get a mem­o­ry from their slimy pal. You'd think this would be as much fun as lis­ten­ing to a bunch of crim­i­nals, but it's high­ly en­ter­tain­ing watch­ing the psy­chopaths scheme, the hyp­no­tist mes­merise, and the volup­tuous vi­su­al play of colours and sce­nar­ios in the back­ground.

The com­plex of un­usu­al emo­tions, macabre sit­u­a­tions, and the im­pro­vi­sa­tion­al ways the char­ac­ters re­spond to their co­nun­drums are pleas­ant­ly stim­u­lat­ing. New emo­tion­al pos­si­bil­i­ties are sug­gest­ed, al­ter­na­tive ways of re­spond­ing to a per­verse re­al­i­ty. Not a bad deal for the price of a movie tick­et.Trance's suc­cess is par­tial­ly due to the fact that it is no more am­bi­tious than the de­sire to en­ter­tain and tell a good sto­ry. But the in­tel­lec­tu­al and artis­tic val­ues sub­li­mat­ed in its mak­ing pro­vid­ed more than that.

This ex­am­ple, of a movie which pro­vides both en­ter­tain­ment and in­tel­lec­tu­al stim­u­la­tion, echoed as I saw Sudz Suther­land's shot-in-Trinidad flick, Home Again. This is the sto­ry of three de­por­tees sent back to Ja­maica from the US, UK, and Cana­da, which is con­sid­er­ably more am­bi­tious than mere en­ter­tain­ment.

Home Again was born of a doc­u­men­tary im­pulse to tell the sto­ry of the de­por­tees and their un­wit­ting roles as vec­tors for a new plague in­flict­ed on the re­gion by in­creas­ing­ly xeno­pho­bic north­ern coun­tries.Trinidad plays a sort-of con­vinc­ing Ja­maica in the flick–Ja­maica be­ing too dan­ger­ous a lo­ca­tion to film in, ap­par­ent­ly–and the movie fol­lows the de­por­tees, a young moth­er, a teenage boy, and a youngish man, through the post-mil­len­ni­um Caribbean.

The sto­ries fol­low over-pre­dictable tra­jec­to­ries. The new­com­ers can't get work, don't fit in, find them­selves stunned at the prim­i­tive­ness of the for­eign so­ci­eties they've been thrown back in­to, and are forced in­to grimy, il­le­gal sit­u­a­tions to sur­vive. The woman is sex­u­al­ly ex­ploit­ed by a rel­a­tive. The men get in­volved in drugs and gangs. But un­like Trance, the writ­ing or act­ing nev­er lifts it out of that naivety.

The movie does a rea­son­able job of hu­man­is­ing the is­sue, and adds faces and bod­ies to ab­stract pol­i­cy. I un­der­stand it's done well in Cana­da, in com­mer­cial re­lease, and at the Toron­to In­ter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val.

There are, how­ev­er, some is­sues about Home Again which be­come ev­i­dent in con­trast to a movie like Trance that like­ly won't be dis­cussed any­where but here. The moral and emo­tion­al arcs of the de­por­tees were sim­plis­tic, com­pris­ing con­fu­sion, anger and vi­o­lence. The vi­su­al and moral rhetorics of the so­cial back­drop run­ning par­al­lel with the plot con­veyed much the same about the so­ci­ety.

Home Again pre­sent­ed doc­u­men­tary fact and com­pe­tent film­mak­ing, but lit­tle artis­tic sur­prise. The char­ac­ters' back­sto­ries are pre­sent­ed in a painstak­ing­ly lit­er­al man­ner. The sin­gle moth­er duped in­to car­ry­ing co­caine. The man forced in­to be­ing a thug to pro­tect his younger sib­ling. The wild teen pay­ing a too-high price for youth­ful in­dis­cre­tion.The char­ac­ters are vic­tims of chance, their con­scious­ness un­re­lieved by ex­tra­ne­ous emo­tion, moral am­bi­gu­i­ty or, cru­cial­ly, ex­is­ten­tial self-re­flec­tion and hu­mour.

The back­drops of the Caribbean so­ci­ety were straight­for­ward tableaux of con­sumerism, wealth and priv­i­lege played against des­per­a­tion, pover­ty, and ex­ploita­tion: light–dark­ness, with lit­tle grey area in be­tween. But in the grey lies every­thing that makes life in­ter­est­ing.

What Home Again re­vealed wasn't any­thing any­one here didn't al­ready know.

We see the so­ci­ety, and the hu­man con­di­tion, the same way we did be­fore see­ing the movie–and I'm sure it's no dif­fer­ent for met­ro­pol­i­tan view­ers. The broad strokes are there, but lit­tle de­tail. And with­out de­tail, what you have is an (an­ti-) tourist brochure.

This is the con­sis­tent fail­ing of the vast ma­jor­i­ty of West In­di­an/Tri­ni art–lit­er­ary, cin­e­mat­ic, vi­su­al. So­ci­eties de­rive emo­tion­al and moral re­spons­es to com­plex re­al­i­ties in part from the end­less transna­tion­al vi­su­al and dis­cur­sive streams rag­ing all around them. In the ab­sence of a lo­cal il­lus­tra­tion of ap­pro­pri­ate emo­tion­al re­ac­tion, the re­sponse to com­pli­cat­ed, un­fa­mil­iar sit­u­a­tions is forced in­to m�sal­liance with small-mind­ed re­li­gios­i­ty, sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty and clich�.

It re­sults, more pro­saical­ly, in laugh­ter dur­ing rape scenes and what not.But lo­cal emo­tion is not mys­te­ri­ous or in­eluctable. Dan­ny Boyle's pre­vi­ous film, Slum­dog Mil­lion­aire, ex­am­ined an en­vi­ron­ment sim­i­lar to ours, be­set with iden­ti­cal prob­lems: pover­ty and ex­ploita­tion vs wealth and priv­i­lege.

And Slum­dog was suc­cess­ful as art and doc­u­men­tary–it com­mu­ni­cat­ed the des­per­a­tion of the slum dwellers, and a pos­si­ble, if un­like­ly sal­va­tion. The en­ablers of that suc­cess were emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence, sub­tle­ty, and so­phis­ti­ca­tion of the in­ter­locu­tors–aka, Boyle and his crew.

The ab­sence of these qual­i­ties is the great de­fi­cien­cy in the bulk of con­tem­po­rary West In­di­an art, along with the in­sis­tence on the om­nibus tropes of op­pres­sion and in­jus­tice. The cause for this fix­a­tion is the men­tal­ly crip­pling post-in­de­pen­dence na­tion­al­ism, which in­sists cer­tain ex­pe­ri­ences, his­to­ries, and re­spons­es are au­then­tic, and oth­ers are not.

�2 To be con­tin­ued