Watching this movie was a sort of a deja vu experience for me. A close relative had discovered Jesus late in life, and she made it her raison d'être to spread His word. And along she went to all four corners of the country praying for the sick and the fallen. She would personally harbour drug addicts and vagabonds in her home to nurse them back to functionality.
I remember her style. To get her congregation interested in her sermon, out of the blue, she would blurt out 'Hallelujah' on top of her lungs to get approval what she was saying. And an often repeated phrase was that Jesus spoke to her in her dreams. How she would in her usual demonstrative form place her hand on the vertex of her client to pray desperately to chase off the devil that plagued them. She looked sincere and was utterly convinced that she was doing something good. At least it kept her sane.
Well, that is not what this film is trying to highlight. There are people out there who target people's weakness and make a living out cheating desperate people blind. Man created religion to give them a tuft of hope in facing day to day uncertainties of life. Religion is supposed to give them sanity when the storm on Earth becomes too overwhelming. It gives them the assurance that their actions of maintaining peace and order will be rewarded, in this life or after. It absorbs the guilt of the mistakes that he commits at the moment of inebriation. There is a fine line between faith giving peace of mind and it being the cause of lunacy. Extremism negates other points of views. There is a loss of mindfulness and the compulsion to cut off other people beliefs. The guilt of not sticking to the true tenets of religion can turn one into a raving lunatic.
It is beyond comprehension how some people are often lulled into submission by putting the fear of God. The world becomes too complicated for some to strive a living that they get suckered into the promise of divinity in negating all the miseries. And they fall prey to their myths. Rather than resorting to critical thinking, they are deluded with blind faith.
This Malayalam movie tells a tale, perhaps not unreal, of a motivational speaker, mired with a sad family history filled with mental illness and a recent suicide of his brother. He is pulled in by a group of businessmen who use religion to dupe the unsuspecting public into evangelical Christianity and faith healing. Viju Prasad is picked up by a talent corp to be given an intensive course on the Bible and is soon christened Pastor Joshua Carlton (JC, referring to Jesus Christ, of course). JC starts doing 'staged' healing that he himself begins to think that he may indeed have healing powers. His bosses are hot under the collar as JC behaves as if he is the brain behind the whole facade.
This film may be the anthesis of 'Mookuthi Amman'. If Mookuthi Amman pokes fun at Hindu godmen, 'Trance' hits up at the bogus media-savvy megalomaniac pastors who victimise desperate patients who are wit's end to find a cure for their advanced maladies. Fahadh Faasil gives a sterling performance as a doting elder brother and a confused healer who is himself at the brink of a mental breakdown.
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