The irony of spiritual leaders who preach a ‘higher’ life free from worldly pleasures, while themselves revelling in a high-flying life complete with private islands and super cars, is often lost on their legion of followers. Entranced by their shallow preachings, targeted at the myriad vulnerabilities of the listeners, many blindly fall into the trap. Trance, directed by Anwar Rasheed, is partly about the careful corporate strategies that goes into the making of one such god figure — Pastor Joshua Carlton (Fahadh Fazil), an atheist who happens to be full of vulnerabilities, which are exploited by two shadowy businessmen (Gautham Menon and Chemban Vinod). Before being catapulted into the spotlight in this new avatar, the pastor used to be Viju Prasad, an aspiring motivational speaker struggling to make his way up.
Mental journey
Beyond the surface, the film is also about his mental journey, which oscillates from emotional troughs to drug-induced highs and to manic extremes, similar to what the pastor’s naive followers are often caught in.
The first half of the film, which captures this transformation, is gripping, owing much to Fahadh’s performance that convinces even the otherwise sceptic viewer who looks down upon such charlatans to partly root for him. The film attains its high by the interval point, almost having the viewer in a trance. That moment was pregnant with possibilities, enough to hold the audience in a rapture till the end.
Unfortunately, from this point, the script goes downhill. One gets to see the writer taking the easy way out at crucial points, bumping off key characters in a tame manner and depending on the usual television newsbreaks to untangle tricky situations.
It loses its plot in trying to say too many things, on everything from depression to drug addiction. Though juxtaposing all this opens the doors to some more intriguing possibilities, it only serves to drag down the plot. The pastor’s sequences with his new secretary Esther Lopez (Nazriya Nazim) only adds to the runtime.
Trance might still manage to ruffle quite a lot of feathers across various religious cults and the among their wide fan base, but as a serious critique of corporate spirituality and as a piece of cinema, it is a half-baked attempt. Having experienced its potency at half-bake, one can only wonder what they would have achieved with a little more patience and ingenuity.
S.R. Praveen