Super rich & a wealth of superficiality

Lust and pleasure, pain and meditation, West and East… can all these inhabit the same space? Well, in Mike White’s third season of ‘The White Lotus’, they do. Those familiar with his award-winning franchise and template are well aware that ‘White Lotus’ is a chain of luxury resorts where the super rich vacay in their quest for the elusive happiness. In the third season, the setting is Thailand, perhaps the perfect place to train the camera on the beauteous and to ask some existential questions too.

There are many strands in the story… a seemingly perfect family of five, three childhood friends reuniting, an ageing balding man with a young woman and yet another couple of a similar variant. What they are seeking in this mental wellness resort depends entirely on how you see them and how they see themselves.

Rick Hatchett (Walton Goggins) is catching up with his unburied traumas of the past, young daughter Piper Ratliff (Sarah Catherine) of the seemingly perfect affluent Ratliff family is here to find purpose in Buddhism. Her sex-obsessed brother Saxon Ratliff (Patrick Schwarzenegger) is only looking for bodily fulfilment. Where this pursuit will take him is the most revelatory and shocking part of the series and is certainly meant to rattle.

Incest is not new to dramas from the West; we saw it in the epic ‘Game of Thrones’. But that was a fantasy and the characters involved had no clue they were related.

In the eight-episode series, of which only six have so far dropped on HBO, where this startling turn of events will go, is hard to say. For now, the drama and the tension build up bit by bit, almost like a slow burn in which veneers fall off the faces of these privileged men and women one by one.

In this world, friendships are not even half as deep. Parker Posey as Victoria, the smug rich wife, needs drugs even in a place as calm as this. But then, this tranquility is perhaps a big facade. In the very first episode, it is shattered by the sound of a gun though, as of now, we don’t know who has killed whom. Come to think of it, the gun is almost a character here, as are the scenic waves. Cinematography by Ben Kutchins takes you into crevices, micro as important as the macro. But amidst the picturesque atmospherics and detailing, the characters never get lost. The actors fit the bill. Apart from Michelle Monaghan as Jaclyn Lemon, a famous TV star, be it Aimee Lou Wood as Chelsea, apparently a bimbo but one with depth of character seeking her soulmate in the somewhat disinterested Rick, or the ‘soulless’ Saxon, they all come alive with all their frailties and fissures intact.

Schwarzenegger truly pushes the envelope and though you start by abhorring his character’s moral depravity, both he and White stop short of making him an out-an-out monster — only a lost soul, instead. Thayme Thapthimthong as Gaitok, a clueless security guard at the White Lotus, offers a point of contrast to the well-heeled.

Writing by White is self-explanatory and profound. What the vacation means to the rich is explained by the lines uttered by Piper, who is anyway a bridge between the western and eastern philosophies.

The Buddhist monk’s observations about the spiritual malaise and how ‘you can’t outrun pain’ and pleasure only leads to more pain. But mind you, White is not being judgmental, just taking you into the lives of the rich who fear poverty more than the poor do.

The less privileged have a part to play in this drama, which is as visually striking as narratively riveting. Of course, if you are squeamish about nudity and sex, certain plot points could offend your sensibilities. Real twists, however, are still awaited in this episodic series as yet another episode streams on March 30.

Exploring the superficial lives of the wealthy, White, however, takes a deep dive into their inner lives and offers a nuanced and taut character-driven thriller. But in a fashion which nowhere comes close to a conventional whodunnit.

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