Sublime!. Review on Black - Bollywood

Sublime! That's the word that comes to mind when I think of Black. The delicateness of emotions, the lack of vulgar melodrama, everything makes even hardened movie-watchers like me choke up at moments during the film.

SPOILERS

The movie tells the story of a girl who grows up without two of the five human senses. The world she lives in, the world her mind has conjured up from her senses is silent (she's deaf), colorless (she's blind), only made up of shapes (sense of touch), smells and tastes.

As a child (played brilliantly by Ayesha Kapoor), no one understands her situation, and no one knows how to reach her mind. People take her to be mentally deficient when the truth is that she's a normal bright young kid, but devoid of the human inputs of sight and sound.

Consequently, she's mistreated and abused, and becomes a wild child, not knowing the social graces or even normal human behavior. Whereupon enters her Savior in the form of a teacher (played by Amitabh Bachchan in one of his most memorable roles) who understands her, and teaches her to be a human being, to be independent, to be confident.

He becomes the sole reason she even exists as a normal member of society; her parents are almost ready to send her off to Agra before Amitabh appears on the scene. The story progresses to show the twists and turns their relationship takes as life moves on for both of them, and moves to a heartrending climax years later, when Michelle (played award-worthily well by Rani Mukherjee) finally graduates after 20 years in college, she finds Amitabh in the last stages of Alzheimer's Disease; a disease (prevalent in the West) that usually hits non-vegetarians in their old age where a person's memory is gradually wiped out so that they can't remember even the previous 5 minutes, let alone 5 years, and hence become incapable of normal human existence. The victims of this disease vividly illustrate how ephemeral everything in life is.

SPOILERS END

This movie really left me spellbound. It didn't beg and cry for your emotions like your typical potboiler, but you nonetheless choked up (with surprise in my case) at certain moments because the movie pulls you in * very subtly * to really identify with what each character is going through.

And it's not just Michelle and her teacher that you understand and feel for, it's her mother who lives through the pain and joy of her daughter, and even her sister, who's been neglected throughout her life by her parents who pay all their attention to Michelle.

For the first time have I watched an Indian movie where the English was not forced, pretentious, unnatural, used as a superiority indicator, but has been used quite naturally, the way Indians really use it. Characters switch normally between English and Hindi, the way you'd expect middle-class characters to.

When I first heard the movie was 60% in English, I wondered if it would be another lame crossover-type film the likes of Mira Nair churn out, but fortunately, it was so naturally worked in, that I didn't even realize what parts were which language, just like in real life. The story and presentation were so gripping that funnily enough, I didn't miss that the movie has no songs at all, didn't even realize it actually.

What I didn't understand was why the characters were Anglo-Indian Christians. I have no problem with that, but I didn't understand why specifically they were so, just as in Bhansali's earlier film about the physically-disadvantaged (Khamoshi). Do Anglo-Indian Christians somehow evoke such stories in Bhansali's mind?

Nor did I get the reason why the movie was set in what seemed to be the 1920s or so; any particular reason there? I enjoyed the photography, but the ornate sets, for example the grandeur of the house (more like a gigantic chateau than a normal house), were disorienting for such a story.

I put those down to Bhansali's penchant for grand sets to awe and wow his audiences. Found it just a tad stretchy in parts, and the plot seems to go nowhere near the end, but overall, a very satisfying movie experience. A class apart. And also a very deep insight into the problems of physically disadvantaged people; I for one, am a much more compassionate person for having seen the movie.

And am very happy to see it doing well at the box office, discounting the myth that only masala movies sell; Bhansali proves the adage: If you tell a good story well, draw the audience in, people will come.

Next time, I hope he goes for an original subject, and not just a remake, even if it's a very well-made one as in this case.