Trijya: The Endless Search
-Sudipto Nag
Directed by: Akshay Indikar| India| 2019 | 91 min
In an era that celebrates and promotes mostly narrative cinema, avant-garde and experimental cinema finds limited space. It is interesting to note that the beauty of non-narrative cinema, or cinema that shapes its structure between documentary and fiction, often lies in some of the most interesting forms emerging in today's cinema through marginal voices. Akshay Indikar is one of those prominent filmmakers whose primary reliance on the non-narrative opens the gate for a meditative experience.
If his Sthalpuran is an internal exploration of a child's inner world, his previous feature Trijya adopts the other way, as it focuses on an external voyage to connect with internal desires. While Sthalpuran adopts observational, documentary-like images blended with the suppressed traumas and fantasies of infantile sensibilities, Trijya addresses the complexity and contradictions of adulthood through poetic documentary images infused with a novel-like profundity to search for the unanswered questions of life. Hence, somewhere down the line, Indikar's approach to cinema is quite clear. Even though both approaches are different, it is evident that his characters and the mise-en-scène surrounding them are not separate but tied in a circular loop, connected to the internal experience processing within the psyche of existence and the vague attempt at articulating, in the case of Trijya, or creating, in the case of Sthalpuran, those distorted pieces of realizations and feelings.
In this piece, I would particularly like to discuss his film Trijya. Despite its non-narrative style of filming, Trijya does not test the viewers. Rather, it invites them to gradually get immersed into a deep meditative state that the film binds together with the help of visuals, poetic narration, and incomprehensible, abstract, bittersweet riddles. The first half questions, and the second half becomes a search for those questions.
The film is primarily about migration. It tells the story of struggling to adjust to the norms of a city, but in a larger context, the film surpasses the subtle comical situations presented in it and gradually takes the viewers into a personal journey that can be very much relatable in the context of today's fast-paced life. A kind of life that provides less space to breathe and rather keeps us busy moving towards a goal. A goal that is not even clear to us, as things are happening so rapidly. From a personal interpretation, Trijya is not about finding something, but rather a spatio-temporal exploration of an endless search.
The film provokes a primitive quality, a quality that makes us human. Interestingly, not only does the film drastically change its rhythm in the second half, but the protagonist's philosophy also gradually shapes itself throughout the progression of the film. In the beginning, his poems mostly question social norms and the contemporary scenario. Gradually, his poems become more philosophical and begin to ask the eternal questions.
This gradual transformation is also deeply connected to the philosophical foundation of the film. The protagonist, Avdhut, is constantly caught between the structures imposed upon him and his own desire to remain detached from them. He is surrounded by a society that expects him to follow a predetermined script: find a stable corporate journalism job, agree to an arranged marriage, and live according to the rhythm of the clock. His discomfort therefore does not remain merely a personal crisis. It becomes a crisis of existence itself.
This aspect of Trijya can be read through Heidegger's idea of "thrownness", the condition of being placed into a pre-existing world of structures, expectations and systems that one never consciously chose. Avdhut is thrown into an urban landscape where even language seems to have lost its poetic possibilities and is reduced to sensationalized newspaper headlines. His wandering therefore becomes an attempt to understand how to exist rather than merely how to survive.
The title itself holds a mathematical philosophy. A radius connects the outer edge of a circle to its absolute centre. Avdhut is a man trapped on the outer circumference, spinning rapidly through city noise, social obligations and modern anxieties. His journey in the later chapters becomes a philosophical movement along the radius, an attempt to move back towards a still and silent centre.
The film's five-chapter structure further strengthens this sense of an inward movement through an outward journey. Its philosophical concerns are not expressed through direct declarations, but through fragments, landscapes, poems, pauses and movements. The film's search is therefore never limited to finding a particular place or answer. It becomes an endless movement between the external world and the internal self.
The visual language of Trijya plays an equally important role in creating this experience. Shades of blue are heavily integrated throughout the film, evoking a deep sense of sadness, isolation and existential turmoil. In some sections of the later half, filmed in the countryside, the film incorporates expansive, dry golden fields that provide a stark, naturalistic contrast to the claustrophobic city spaces. The camera often remains stationary. These slow, static shots emphasize the protagonist's internal inertia and his inability to connect with the fast-moving world around him.
The sound design further extends this internal experience. Distorted city noise and static emerge when the character zones out, creating an atmospheric microcosm of his chaotic inner world. Sound does not merely accompany the images here. It becomes a part of the film's philosophical coherence, allowing the external environment to gradually transform into an expression of the character's internal state.
Many critics have compared the visual vocabulary of Trijya with Abbas Kiarostami, which is undeniable. But Trijya's novel-like, non-linear structure and its reliance on scattered visual montages and time-lapse do not function only as spatial devices. They also suggest a fragmentation of thoughts, memories and perceptions. Time itself appears to become another material through which the protagonist's internal condition is articulated. This is where Indikar's approach begins to develop an innovative signature of its own.
The film's shift from the questioning first half to the searching second half is therefore not simply a structural decision. It reflects the gradual transformation of Avdhut himself. What begins as a resistance towards contemporary social norms slowly turns into an engagement with questions that are much older and more universal. The journey moves from the city towards nature, from noise towards silence, from external expectations towards internal questioning.
Perhaps this is why Trijya does not feel like a film that is trying to provide an answer. It is a film about remaining within the question. Its non-narrative structure does not create distance from the viewer but allows the viewer to inhabit the uncertainty of the protagonist. The scattered images, poetic narration, static frames, distorted sounds and changing landscapes gradually form a meditative space where the distinction between the external voyage and internal experience begins to disappear.
Ultimately, Trijya is not about finding something. It is about the movement towards something that may never be found. It is about migration not only across geographical spaces but across states of existence. The radius becomes a metaphor for that movement, connecting the restless circumference with the possibility of a silent centre. So, perhaps the film's most primitive quality lies precisely there: in its ability to remind us that beneath our social identities, professional ambitions and everyday routines, there remains an unanswered human impulse to understand where we are, why we are here, and what it means to exist.
Sudipto Nag is a film writer, filmmaker, and curator. His film reviews and criticism have appeared in Tripura Times, Tripura Observer, and the cultural magazine Bhaan. He is the editor of the Rare Films collective, publishing film-writing booklets and collective publications on obscure and underseen cinema.
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