Black

One of my all-time favourite movies reviewed originally for dogmatrix.com. Read on:

Black (2005):*****

45 minutes. Yes, you heard it damn right. For the final 45 minutes continuously, I found myself sitting in the darkness of the cinema and weeping like a 2 year old. Truth be told, good scenes and honest cinematic moments have worked my tear-glands for 5-10 minutes in the past, but 45 minutes! As scene after scene of this unabashedly moving motion picture flowed on screen, so did my tears. If this isn’t proof enough of how emotionally potent Black is, I wonder what could be.

A memoir of an Anglo-Indian deaf-and-blind Michelle McNally (Rani Mukherjee) which commences in her frustrated, violent childhood (as young Ayesha Kapur) that is reformed by a teacher Debraj Sahai (Amitabh Bachchan) who himself gets inflicted by Alzhiemer’s later; this haunting and emotionally intense tale’s effect should be seen to be felt.

Singling out the best scenes of the enterprise would be both unnecessary and unfair as this amazingly edited film is chockfull of never-seen-before scenes in undiluted continuum. But commit this sin of singling the scenes I will, because this review would be so incomplete without them (Spoilers abound aplenty, so those haven’t yet seen the film, stop NOW).

~~The Moments~~

In approximate chronological order, Debraj being told by Mrs Nair to go to McNally house to teach Michelle is the first memorable sequence just for its sheer tongue-in-cheek nature as Debraj translates Mrs Nair’s words in sign language, with hilarious effects. When the lady tells him to stop his sign-language bull-shit, he even contorts his hands to show a bull shitting! Marvellously canned. In the same scene, Debraj realising the irony of his job as a deaf-n-blind teacher (his students waved him goodbye looking in the opposite direction when he gets kicked out of the school for being a drunkard) is heart-rending.

The violence, the power and the energy of the young Michelle is so over-powering on screen, its haunting. Each of the scenes… where she pukes rice on Debraj’s face after being forced to eat calmly at the dining, where she kicks him hard and grabs the cake, tears it like sponge and gorges on it like some beast—the animalistic trait is so effectively captured by the young actor’s (Ayesha Kapur’s) squinting eyes, Debraj’s struggle, the dark-light frantic play of the camera and genuinely chilling background music that witnessing young Michelle finally eating calmly makes you heave a big sigh of relief.

The whole of first half is dedicated to young Michelle learning the connection between words and their meaning, and just before the lights go up to mark the intermission, the impossible happens—she learns the first meaningful word–water. In the very next scene, the way this girl runs around feeling the grass, the flowers, her mother, her dad and finally her teacher is the moment where I personally wanted to jump and scream out aloud (the impact of the emotions in this scene is overwhelming) and at the same time get a strange cognizance of the sheer limitlessness of the world around me.

I guess, it is somewhere here that the viewer develops a very strong affinity for all of the film’s characters and from here on, one winces every time Michelle fails her first graduating year, one aches to hold her and hug her as she phones her mom and struggles to utter “Ma Fail” and one wants to kick her sister Sara for being so evil to Michelle. Every struggle, every victory, every failure of the characters become your struggle, victory and failure. You feel their pain, their glee, their gloom… seldom have I come so close to a film’s characters.

The second half touches another pinnacle of raw emotion with Michelle continuously failing her graduation (the fact that you see Debraj and Michelle working hard through all the texts pronounces the disappointment even more). The scene where she’s made to realise that she’ll remain physically alone by her sister and being told to behave at the latter’s engagement dinner is another memorable scene. Rani’s expressions as she stares empty-eyed into the mirror are piece-de-resistance… her very look makes you wonder aloud if such a pure, innocent person ever deserved the harsh treatment. The very next scene where Sara reveals how in her own small ways, she always succeeded in torturing Michelle and Michelle’s outburst thereafter hits you hard as Debraj reads out Michelle’s small, loving speech for Sara. The beauty of the scene is – one empathises with both Michelle and Sara – innocent victims of sibling rivalry.

The last two sequences I’d love to pen down are where Michelle asks Debraj to kiss her once for he’s as close as she’d ever come to a man (watching Rani going all flaccid and falling back in the chair with a loud sigh before Amitabh kisses her is one helluva cinematic moment!) and where she stands in the hospital ward all decked up in her graduation gown as Debraj, an Alzheimer’s patient, tries to remember Michelle (Rani’s graduation speech and watching Amitabh as he feels the cape n the cap of Rani is a gem and makes one’s belief ever so strong that the film’s got a heart).

~~The Players~~

Like candles in a room burning the wax and spreading light, each of the performers in Black burn in their characters spreading raw emotion. Each shine with his own brilliance and in doing so, complements the brilliance of others.

If there’s anything eluding the status of “legend” to Rani Mukherji, Black is going to make sure its removed and she gets it much before any Indian actress ever did. The Bengali lass goes from strength to strength in every passing frame and is excellent throughout. That staring-in-space gaze (no, I can’t get that look out of my head) , those few words she utters with immense difficulty (“Ma Pass”, “Ma Fail”), the loud throaty sighs when she’s uttering her words, fuming or is excited; her reactions to the world around her (besides the above sequences, watch out for scenes where she learns walking with a stick, or bumps into a candelabrum-fells down and laughs at herself), and that daffy-duck walk… Rani’s made Michelle timeless.

I so dreaded coming to this part of the review as I am at utter loss of words for Amitabh Bachchan’s performance. Let’s not call it a performance to make my job easier. He’s reacted (not acted) all through like Debraj Sahai would. That pain in the bloodshot eyes, that energy in the animated hands, and that fatherly concern in the baritone… its all there to watch and relish. Though it’s surprising how someone so intellectually stimulating could develop Alzheimer’s but when Debraj does develop it, an emptiness envelopes you, the viewer. As the camera pitilessly captures the I-don’t-know-what-you-are-talking-about look on Amitabh’s face time and again, one’s moved beyond words. Its such a towering performance, I doubt whether BigB himself would ever better it.

Criminal it would be to not appreciate the quality of work that Shernaz Patel (watch the lady weep on realising her baby Michelle is deaf-n-blind and when Michelle learns her first word), Nandana Sen (as Michelle’s sis, Sara– she’s one of the reasons why the engagement sequence is memorable) and most importantly Ayesha Kapur (as the young, violent Michelle) have put in and who together with the efficient supporting cast make Black an intense experience.

At times reminding one of Devdas’s theme, Monty’s background score is an ace and the composer’s ability to carefully dissect every moment and inject a bang there and a tinkle there takes Black’s sequences to new levels. The film’s theme carries as much soul and emotional weight as the film’s story. And so does the visuals. The constant black-white play of the light and the sets, the visual metaphors which are abundant all through (cold, snowing exteriors and warm, oak-wood interiors of McNally House), the leisurely camera “watching” the life of Michelle from hidden angles only seldom going into “celebratory” mode (there’s the Bhansali favourite overhead shot where the camera rotates above the dining table as everyone raises a toast to Sara’s engagement and as it “flies” away into the whiteness towards the climax with Michelle-Debraj feeling water) and the wonderfully crafted out McNally House (its dark and opulent yet never overbearing or distracting). The difficult-to-place geography and ethnicity of the performers, contrary to what I read elsewhere, go that extra mile to make Black a universal venture.

Very snappy editing further polishes Black and in fact sometimes the scissors being run are so sharp, the film resembles a collage of images played in quick succession (the scene where Michelle finds Debraj tied to a bedpost with metal chains— one shot sees her struggling to free Debraj and screaming. Cut to next one—she’s walking with the chains down the corridor. The effect of editing makes this otherwise gut-wrenching sequence bitter-sweet). At 120 minutes long, there isn’t a single wasted scene, a single ill-chosen sub-plot or sequence… every scene is momentous, every character in very moment present for a reason. There’s little relief from the dramatic sequences in the 2nd half and coupled with the sympathetic tone that the film possesses all through, it makes it extremely difficult to sit-through the screening dry-eyed.

Everything kept aside, if there’s a man who deserves a bow from the viewers, its Sanjay Leela Bhansali who weaves this powerful tale with such astute precision both aesthetically and emotionally, that its doubtful if Black actually came out of Bollywood. There’s so much implosion of pain on screen in the film to take in for the senses, its overwhelming. If the man took everyone’s breaths away with his craftsmanship in Devdas, he does that again with his storytelling in Black.

Hope after watching this film, the so-called bigwigs and showmans of the industry sit-up and realise what’s cinema actually all about and what tosh they have been dishing out in the name of cinema in the past years. 2005’s already turned a vintage year for Bollywood with Black’s release– hope there are more such honest, heart-rending films from the world of Indian cinema.

Even as I wrap up this critique, I can’t help but wonder if there’d be anything as rich, as warm and as wise as Black this year, or for that matter the coming years (yep, call me a big pessimist you can). Seeing the immensely lovable characters struggle through their darkness and finally finding light—this is cinema at its best. Played beautifully, its combination of gentle realism in the dark worlds of mentally and physically disabled people makes for what is essentially a modern day masterpiece. A masterpiece just as dark, warm and magnetic as the colour BLACK.