BLACK I Prefer White

BLACK: I Prefer White
Tushar K Shukla

"Black is the answer to all Hollywood's misgivings till date" "Bhansali's Black is comparable to any of contemporary cinema's classics." Blah...blah...blah....Now time for some truth..... Hear it from the horse's mouth.... Ladies and Gentlemen: presenting before you the man himself... Feel blessed, feel honored.... The final word on the most confusingly reviewed and misinterpreted movie of all times....yes you are bang right, we are talking about the much raved about, famously pronounced as "The sole deserving candidate for the academy awards", a masterpiece of art, creation beyond comparison or even explanation, a movie so huge you feel like disappearing in thin air when it rolls, and wish you could run away from those pretentious pricks applauding in the dark asylum amidst an alarming vacuum of misconception and misinterpretation, and may be catch something subtle at home, for a change, far from the maddening crowds, who rejoice at every howl, who jump at every brawl..... Take me away, O lords of my destiny, if this is BLACK, I prefer WHITE! This is easily the most misconceived movies of all times, at least in the Indian celluloid history. The minute the movie rolled, and I saw a schizophrenic Amitabh, I knew what was coming, and guess what, I was RIGHT! The protagonist, the small girl looks like an Indian impersonation of the two girls from The Ring and The Exorcist, with due apologies and respect to Verbinski and Friedkin, respectively, who keeps howling all the time as if she has just come back from watching Black. She looks like she went to see Sixth Sense and missed THE scene. Agreed that it was supposed to be a DARK movie, agreed that they were supposed to garner sympathy and tears for its hollering monologue sessions, and agreed that as human beings you do tend to get swept away in the stream of emotions so basic to our survival, but tell me one thing. Where were the emotions?! All I found was noisy confrontations all through the tiring 95 minutes (well if the actual movie is longer, I would kiss the guy who gave me an edited DVD!) in first few minutes of the movie, I thought it will take me a while to get attuned to the dark, unexpressed emotions, but when it didn't affect me a penny, I started getting worried about my reaction time and nerve impulses' functioning. But they were not to be blamed, may be I have seen way too many movies by now that such blown-up sagas of pathos don't influence me any longer even in the minutest possible way. The movie did have some inspiring aspects, like the sets, the camera, the lights, but let me add just one thing, they all were looking way too Victorian to fit the depicted time period in the movie! Amidst all this mumbo-jumbo of Black making it to the Oscars, I have some thousand thirty inhibitions about the remote possibility of that being true. The movie attempts a daring depiction and storyline of disabled people, which is a very commendable step to start with. They have even tried showing the constricted views of the world towards the chances of their betterment to a certain successful extent. But if the moviemakers had embarked upon such a noble task of diverting the attention of the hackneyed audience, who have become used to the song and dance routine much too often now, may be they should have worked a little more into understanding as to what their world is all about, beyond the stereotypical BLACK that they keep hammering from pillar to post. I understand that Black substantiates their concept and symbolizes a world devoid of all things colorful and lively, but couldn't they leave a few things to the intelligent audience's imagination, an assumption that they sure must have made while spending such obscene amounts(read a fifteen crores INR!). A few things like the much-publicized KISS between the lead actors, which truly I was imagining all the time waiting for it! This could have been a rare creation by Mumbai cinema, considering the oodles of moolah they waste on lavish sets and costumes, which make no sense whatsoever. All the movie relies on is gaining sympathy on characters oozing with self-pity and pretence. Way to go, Bollywood, you don't get Oscars by stuffing things like Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, amnesia and the works. Remember, someone said, Keep It Simple, Stupid!