Education should start with T.H.I.N.K. Review on Black - Bollywood

I am anosmic by birth. My mother still takes every opportunity she gets to shove things up my nose in the hope that my sense of smell will miraculously return (maybe that is a wrong word, for it was never there to return); but I remain blissfully ignorant of what it feels like to smell something. My friends, after they are done mocking me about it, often feel sorry for me for missing out on smelling so many things. I tell them their pity is misplaced, because I can't possibly miss something I never felt. The word 'smell' does not have any meaning to me. Does smelling a rose feel like tasting a favourite dish? Does it feel like stretching your legs at the end of a long day? Does it feel like looking at a beautiful red sunset? All I can do is associate the sense of smell with other 'feel good' things I know, but I can never know what it actually is like, and for that very reason, I will never miss it.

'Black' starts off with a voice-over asking you, 'How long can you live in darkness? A few minutes? A few hours? A few days? Imagine living in darkness for forty years. There is only one word to describe my existence: Black'. Now that is a very well-written dialogue, but it commits the same fallacy I described in the first paragraph; Michelle never knew light or sound. The very concepts of shape, colour and music are utterly incomprehensible to her. The only sense she has is that of touch, and all she can do is to associate the idea of light to 'feel good' feelings of her own like the taste of her favourite dish or the touch of smooth velvet. She has never known the sense of sight or hearing; so it is fallacious to suggest that she will ever miss it. Of course, the purpose of the dialogue is to make you feel sorry for Michelle, and I think to a large degree, it achieves its objective.

The movie then proceeds to show us the first seven years in the life of young Michelle with her parents and sister. The picturisation had me mildly amused because Michelle, for some obscure reason, always seemed to have this devilish grin on her face which meant that I had to keep telling myself that she is supposed to be a deaf-dumb-blind girl and not a mentally retarded one. The mild amusement turned to hysterical laughter when Debraj Sahai tells Michelle's mother off saying 'She is blind Mrs McNally, not mentally retarded!'. First they show her as mentally retarded when she is not, and then they make one of the characters explicitly state that she is not. Is this another trick the devil (read Sanjay Leela Bhansali) played on us poor souls to get us to feel for Michelle? We can only speculate.

The whole point of the movie seems to be that affected (physically or mentally) people are in no way inferior to those of us that are more fortunate, but by evoking so much pity for Michelle, Sanjay Leela Bhansali seems to be implying that there is something horribly wrong with her. We are so engrossed in feeling sorry for her that we don't identify with her at all. Her sense of achievement, her sense of joy, her sense of sorrow...nothing. All we feel towards her is an overwhelming feeling of pity. Pity, pity and more pity. Nothing else. And pity is a long-time friend of self-pride and superiority.

Stories of mentally or physically affected individuals, due to their very nature, come with a liberal amount of emotions. An honest film-maker tones them down so that the story can be told unhindered. Take the 1972 film Koshish for instance. When you looked at Sanjeev Kumar and Jaya Badhuri in that movie, you had no time to feel sorry for them. You lived their life with them, you felt their joy when they gave birth to their son, you felt Sanjeev Kumar's anger when he flares up at his son, you felt their sorrow when they mistakenly think that their son is deaf and dumb like them, and you felt a pleasant sense of satisfaction when you saw the interactions between the lead characters. Sadly, you don't see any of that in Black. But it is to be expected. Sanjay Leela Bhansali is no Gulzar.

The saving grace of the movie, in my opinion, comes from the performances of the actors. Ayesha Kapoor as the younger Michelle does surprisingly well considering she had to keep her pupils dilated for her whole part. She should be an automatic choice for any subsequent horror film in the making. Amitabh Bachchan is eccentric, thoughtful and rude in patches without looking too out of place. Rani Mukherjee also comes out with flying colours with her vacant expressions, good dialogue delivery and strange gait. All the other cast members offer admirable support. However, a comparison of Rani with Sanjeev Kumar from Koshish, though unfair, gives one an indication of how much room her performance had for improvement.

That's my two cents. I have written this review a year after its official release date so I know the reaction the movie has inspired in general. I also know that Bhansali has chosen the easy way out in making a film using unnecessary melodrama and emotional dialogue. This has made the movie successful, because Bhansali knows that we often judge a film by the amount of tears rolling off our cheeks; not by the amount of realism in the movie. It is unfortunate, but it is also true. Maybe education, for all of us, instead of starting with A.B.C.D.E, should start with T.H.I.N.K.