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Black is the colour of learning
Media Watch
Courtesy of Yash Raj Films
Film Black is the colour of learning
Black (12A) Directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali Yash Raj Films, 2004 India, Hindi with English subtitles, 124 mins
A film exploring the relationship between a deaf–blind student and her inspirational teacher, who has developed Alzheimer’s disease, offers a few too many opportunities for a director to utter the phrase “cue violins”. Unfortunately the temptation is all too much for Sanjay Leela Bhansali in the Bollywood melodrama Black. Black opens with Debraj Sahai’s return to the family home of his former pupil, Michelle McNally. Alzheimer’s disease has all but destroyed Sahai. Prevented from making any sense of a world he had once helped others to understand, he speechlessly wanders; the once-proud educator is ruined by his unrelenting illness. As Michelle decides to repay her teacher for the redemption he provided her, she begins to recall their life together. The daughter of a wealthy Anglo-Indian couple, Michelle was robbed of her sight and hearing by a childhood illness. Her somewhat over-privileged parents, driven to despair after a series of accidents for which Michelle is responsible but cannot be blamed, call in Sahai as a last resort. If he cannot help their daughter to live in a normal environment then she is to be placed in an institution. Black traces Michelle and Sahai’s tortuous progress as they attempt to overcome her
disabilities. We watch Michelle’s journey from animal-like confusion to educated independence, a journey that the illfated Sahai later makes in reverse. The performances in Black are beyond reproach. Amitabh Bachchan is charismatic, imparting to Sahai a dignified nobility neatly offset by an impish sense of humour. The supporting cast are equally assured, expertly portraying a series of underwritten parts. This is a film with a firm focus on the lead role. Ayesha Kapur flawlessly plays the young Michelle. One of the highlights is a scene in which Michelle, thwarted in her desire to eat with her hands, is left lying on the dining table wildly flailing, drowning in the soundless depths of a pitch216
black sea. The older Michelle is played with energetic confidence by Rani Mukerji in a highly credible representation that conveys the character’s emotional development. Black is a visual delight: beautifully shot and exquisitely coloured. Michelle’s emergence from her intellectual darkness is mirrored by a cinematography that moves from bleak twilight to dazzling luminescence. Indeed it is visually that Black is at its strongest, the film’s recurrent motifs and metaphors far more effective than their rhetorical equivalents. There is much to recommend in Black. A likeable strain of physical comedy runs through the film, a gentle diversion from its sober preoccupations: Sahai signs a disgruntled curse at his pupil; Michelle’s first attempt to walk on her own results in her purposefully striding in the opposite direction to the one that she intended; and a poster for Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid looks on as Michelle and Sahai effect an unintentional homage. Bhansali also addresses—albeit very gingerly—the taboo subject of the disabled and sex and briefly touches on the issue of words and meaning. Perhaps the most peculiar aspect of Black is its view of India: it doesn’t have one. The film splits its time between the McNally’s sprawling colonial mansion—as typical of the average Indian residence as Brideshead is of the average bungalow in Bracknell—and Michelle’s mountain girded University. The latter is situated in a twee little hamlet called Windsong, a milieu that feels about as Indian as the cuckoo clock. Social realism is clearly not the concern here and the audience is left as detached from the sights and sounds of the subcontinent as Michelle. There are the barest of hints at the plight of India’s disabled in scenes involving Sahai’s improbably white sanatorium but these are no more than plot devices, the engineerings of a director determined to continually raise the emotional ante. Black is couched in terms of pure melodrama, unable to escape the restrictions of a limiting genre. Sahai’s illness is a case in point. While the onset of Alzheimer’s disease is depicted realistically and tenderly, Bhansali insists on a simplistic ending that belies the reality of the disease. Equally damaging is an uninspired screenplay bursting with inane clichés (“black is the colour of learning”, “wings are made of words”), although these do not represent the film’s greatest aural assault—that honour falls to the tireless violins and their reliable deputy, the mournful cello. Certainly there are genuinely moving passages in Black but the film is impaired by a heavy-handed direction and a tendency towards mawkish sentimentality. Black is an uneven film that gestures in the right direction but ultimately disappoints.
Talha Burki [email protected]
http://neurology.thelancet.com Vol 4 April 2005
Courtesy of Yash Raj Films
Film Black is the colour of learning
Black (12A) Directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali Yash Raj Films, 2004 India, Hindi with English subtitles, 124 mins
A film exploring the relationship between a deaf–blind student and her inspirational teacher, who has developed Alzheimer’s disease, offers a few too many opportunities for a director to utter the phrase “cue violins”. Unfortunately the temptation is all too much for Sanjay Leela Bhansali in the Bollywood melodrama Black. Black opens with Debraj Sahai’s return to the family home of his former pupil, Michelle McNally. Alzheimer’s disease has all but destroyed Sahai. Prevented from making any sense of a world he had once helped others to understand, he speechlessly wanders; the once-proud educator is ruined by his unrelenting illness. As Michelle decides to repay her teacher for the redemption he provided her, she begins to recall their life together. The daughter of a wealthy Anglo-Indian couple, Michelle was robbed of her sight and hearing by a childhood illness. Her somewhat over-privileged parents, driven to despair after a series of accidents for which Michelle is responsible but cannot be blamed, call in Sahai as a last resort. If he cannot help their daughter to live in a normal environment then she is to be placed in an institution. Black traces Michelle and Sahai’s tortuous progress as they attempt to overcome her
disabilities. We watch Michelle’s journey from animal-like confusion to educated independence, a journey that the illfated Sahai later makes in reverse. The performances in Black are beyond reproach. Amitabh Bachchan is charismatic, imparting to Sahai a dignified nobility neatly offset by an impish sense of humour. The supporting cast are equally assured, expertly portraying a series of underwritten parts. This is a film with a firm focus on the lead role. Ayesha Kapur flawlessly plays the young Michelle. One of the highlights is a scene in which Michelle, thwarted in her desire to eat with her hands, is left lying on the dining table wildly flailing, drowning in the soundless depths of a pitch216
black sea. The older Michelle is played with energetic confidence by Rani Mukerji in a highly credible representation that conveys the character’s emotional development. Black is a visual delight: beautifully shot and exquisitely coloured. Michelle’s emergence from her intellectual darkness is mirrored by a cinematography that moves from bleak twilight to dazzling luminescence. Indeed it is visually that Black is at its strongest, the film’s recurrent motifs and metaphors far more effective than their rhetorical equivalents. There is much to recommend in Black. A likeable strain of physical comedy runs through the film, a gentle diversion from its sober preoccupations: Sahai signs a disgruntled curse at his pupil; Michelle’s first attempt to walk on her own results in her purposefully striding in the opposite direction to the one that she intended; and a poster for Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid looks on as Michelle and Sahai effect an unintentional homage. Bhansali also addresses—albeit very gingerly—the taboo subject of the disabled and sex and briefly touches on the issue of words and meaning. Perhaps the most peculiar aspect of Black is its view of India: it doesn’t have one. The film splits its time between the McNally’s sprawling colonial mansion—as typical of the average Indian residence as Brideshead is of the average bungalow in Bracknell—and Michelle’s mountain girded University. The latter is situated in a twee little hamlet called Windsong, a milieu that feels about as Indian as the cuckoo clock. Social realism is clearly not the concern here and the audience is left as detached from the sights and sounds of the subcontinent as Michelle. There are the barest of hints at the plight of India’s disabled in scenes involving Sahai’s improbably white sanatorium but these are no more than plot devices, the engineerings of a director determined to continually raise the emotional ante. Black is couched in terms of pure melodrama, unable to escape the restrictions of a limiting genre. Sahai’s illness is a case in point. While the onset of Alzheimer’s disease is depicted realistically and tenderly, Bhansali insists on a simplistic ending that belies the reality of the disease. Equally damaging is an uninspired screenplay bursting with inane clichés (“black is the colour of learning”, “wings are made of words”), although these do not represent the film’s greatest aural assault—that honour falls to the tireless violins and their reliable deputy, the mournful cello. Certainly there are genuinely moving passages in Black but the film is impaired by a heavy-handed direction and a tendency towards mawkish sentimentality. Black is an uneven film that gestures in the right direction but ultimately disappoints.
Talha Burki [email protected]
http://neurology.thelancet.com Vol 4 April 2005