An Emotional Review . Review on Black - Bollywood

BLACK is about…

B-Lack is lack of Brightness but this movie titled “Black” is full of bright and triumphant moments. “Black” is a poetry written with sound and light that celebrates the glorious moments and the colour and music in the life of a blind and deaf girl called Michelle McNally. It also essays her divine bonding with her eccentric teacher called Debraj Sahai. Debraj feels that his ultimate karma of life is to get Michelle out of her dark world and teach her what the real world is. With Debraj’s guidance and her sense of touch, she learns everything about the real world starting from the feel and diction of the word “Spoon” to the feel of a man’s kiss and love. She even passes graduation in a university. What will happen if condition of Michelle and Debraj are reversed now? The movie answers this riddle in a poetic way.

Dream and BLACK

Have you ever realized that you will never realize a dream as a dream when you are dreaming and all your senses surrender to your dream as it were real? Only after waking up, you will realize what had happened was in your dream. It is because while dreaming your soul alone is active and is directly involved in it and not your physical body unlike real life. This concept of dream will well apply to my experience of watching this movie. I didn’t realize that I was watching a movie until I saw the end credits rolling.

The movie draws your soul entirely into it to an extent that you yourself will feel as a part of proceedings in the movie. You will try to stop Debraj when he treats Michelle in a crude way in the name of teaching, you will try to run and hug her when she utters the word “MA” even before her ma does it, you will try to help Michelle when she is left stranded in the streets by the absent minded Debraj, you will cry for all her struggling to success and shed sweet tears out of joy when she overcomes every obstacles and though impossible you will try to freeze the divine moment of Debraj and Michelle kissing each other out or pure love and you will …so on and so forth. Even after leaving the cinemas, you get trapped between two worlds, one is the world of “Black” in which you lived for past two hours and the other is your real world and you will be in a situation similar to that of Neo in Matrix-3.

Man of BLACK – Sanjay Leela Bhansali

One man behind all this is Mr. Sanjay, the director whom I thought as the most overrated before watching this film. But now I am totally convinced. He is the one in the league of directors like Asutosh, Maniratnam who make daringly different movies.

Visual Writing

The word screenplay may not imply the true nature of work that he has done in this movie. The art with which he has transformed the script into stunning poetic visuals is something that is yet to be named. The way in which he has composed the shots and frames is something that was not done in the visual writing (screenplay) before. The screenplay is taut and gripping. The movie was not at all boring and two hours passed like a flash of lightening. Sanjay has done a clever move by giving more importance to human emotions, expressions and their relationship rather than costumes and sets thereby correcting the big mistake that he did in “Devdas”. A light subtle humor that goes hand in hand with the script evokes brief laughter amidst tensed moments.

Character Sketch

It is the wild, arrogant nature of Debraj which increases the momentum in the screenplay and Sanjay has done an excellent job in the characterization of Debraj and even all other characters for that matter. Immediately after their introduction scenes, you are well informed about their character sketches and you know how the characters will react in any given situation and that takes us further close to the world of “Black” and its characters.

Sanjay has got best of the lot for essaying such unconventional characters and also extracted the best from them. I think the director himself would have learned the sign language without which such a script, screenplay and direction is unimaginable. Each and every shot of the movie seeks help from sign language and so a lot of homework has gone in the scripting stage itself which we can clearly understand from the neatly executed scenes.

Shades of BLACK

Amitabh Bachan and Rani Mukherjee have killed and buried their own self and reincarnated as Debraj Sahai and Michelle in “Black”. I have no words to praise their performance. With their screen presence, excellent dialogue delivery with right stress and pauses (NA for Rani), body language, mannerisms and above all their perfect usage of sign language makes them suit their roles to T. Ayesha Kapoor as the younger Michelle is a surprise package. She even swallows Amitabh with her performance in some of the scenes. A kid portraying such a role is not a child’s play. And one more noteworthy performance is from Mrs. McNally (I don’t know her real name). She comes around as a true symbol of motherhood.

Colour of BLACK

If Sanjay is thought behind the poetry, it is Ravi.K.Chandran‘s camera work that transforms the thought into a visual calligraphy. Right colors of ink are chosen to flow through to suit the emotions of the words in the poetry. His selection of tones for various moods like blue tone for breezy, tender cool moments, grey and black tone for dull and struggling moments, yellow tone for moments of glory and celebration, pure white tone reflecting the inability of Debraj to recall the spectrum of colors in his past life are perfect and the images are razor sharp.

Sound of BLACK

Parallel down the line of the poetry of Sanjay, you will listen to some symbolic characters, which are nothing but musical notes drawn by Monty which amplifies the impact of the visuals further. Never the sound distracts our dream; instead it does raise the level of emotions. Soon these music notes are going to be released as a book (music album) which I am eagerly waiting to buy and read through it separately. Most of the moments are filled with piano and western classical style of orchestrations and very minimally Indian strings and notes are used. Always you will a bass sound buzzing in the background to keep us involved and tensed. Monty has aptly spotted the moments where to not score as sound of silence is enough to create an impact at these moments and any further inclusion of music may turn to be a distraction.

The costumes and art direction are done well that brings the period and life style of Anglo Indians living in Shimla before our eyes.

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