Review of Trishul

Introduction

Another excellent screenplay from Salim Khan and Javed Akthar, using the angry young man image, created by the screen writers and Amitabh Bachchan, to its fullest form. Yash Chopra manages to direct this film successfully from start to finish. There is never a dull moment.

The film rings out as a simple, intelligent, powerful and unpretentious dramatisation of the life of a man angry with his father. The film manages the tricky task of creating a story, characters, and dialogue that translates into broad human terms while also retaining the vitality and specificity of the basic themes the film represents. It reminds me more of a Shakespearian tragedy and is well crafted as one.

Details within the film are not merely flashed for show or fetished as they often are in other Indianfilms. Instead Yash Chopra invests them with the development of characters and narrative. In this sense, Trishul finds its place by creating strong, believable characters with a memorable story to tell. The ensemble cast makes good on the great script, with particularly strong performances by the whole cast.

Songs are memorable as well as melodious and very poetic, and production values are exceptionally good for a film from this era. Overall this film is another classic from Yash Raj that will be hard to forget in the many years to come.

Video

Deewar (1975), which was restored on DVD by the authors at DEI, did the same here with this DVD and they seem to have achieved the best once again. The picture is near flawless for its age, though there are some scenes, which do have limited dust marks left on the film stock. But this goes unnoticeable at times as the film has a fresh quality to it.

The film has been restored to its original aspect ratio, which was 1.33:1, a format mostly used in films during the 60s and 70s. But if you compare it to the video version you`ll see a difference. VHS versions tend to zoom up on the picture cutting not only the sides of the picture but the top and bottom of it as well. But this DVD shows you how the director intended the audience to see it, with nothing cropped from the picture.

The sharp and crystal clear picture has no sign of artefacts or grain, delivering a fresh crisp digital quality that only impresses for a film this old. There are limited signs of shimmering and moiré effects on clothes, which won`t be disruptive to viewing. Once again, as with the Deewar DVD, this DVD clearly impressed everyone as the film is over twenty years old and yet the print is in excellent condition.

The detailed picture on this DVD is due to the average bit rate which is very high, providing plenty of information to see. Skin tones and colour fidelity are outstanding giving a natural feel to the film. The colour saturation never appears to be worn off or distorted so for a film this old it creates a truly remarkable presence. The contrast and dark details also marvel with brilliance creating a truly cinematic feeling.

During the credit sequence at the start of the movie it does tend to get a little dark and has some problems with colour co-ordination, but the film was shot like that and is not the fault of the DVD authoring. Production values in filmmaking were low in the seventies and it shows on this DVD in certain scenes. Yet it doesn`t look cheap here, it rather gives a nostalgic feeling adding value to the overall film.

Audio

The sound is mono and is free from any major distortion, doing its job in giving clear and precise information that accompanies this film.

Features

The menus are impressively animated with the soundtrack of the film being played. The menus are thematic in design and are very easy to navigate. English subtitles are spot on, but other additional features would have been nice.

Conclusion

After the excellent DVD of Deewar, this DVD has also exceeded my expectations from DEI in the way they take care in mastering older movies on DVD. Trishul has never looked this good, ever, and this DVD should be awarded the gold mark for the effort placed in to it.

Be aware that the DEI DVD version of this film reviewed here has now been discontinued as rights now lie with Eros. The Eros version is not as impressive as the DEI version though, so if you do venture for this film on DVD see if you can source the limited DEI version.