If you watch one movie this year, let that movie be Black. Sanjay Leela Bhansaliâs Black is a passionate and powerful cinematic experience. From the outset of the film, the audience is taken on an emotional journey in an epic proportion. xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Black is a tribute to the renowned blind and deaf laureate, Helen Keller. Bhansali offers his interpretation of the unique relationship between Helen Keller and her teacher Annie Sullivan. In Black, Bhansali replaces Sullivan for Debraj Sahai (Amitabh Bachchan), and the Kellerâs remarkable life is portrayed by Rani Mukerji, as Michelle McNally.
âLife is like an ice-cream; enjoy it before it melts awayâ. This is what Sahai teaches his student McNally. Sahai plays a teacher who has to come to terms with his own impending blackness âthe profession he so loves and has made his life, is drawing to an end. The principle at the school he teaches at, receives a letter from Michelleâs desperate mother, who has heard about the prowess of Sahaiâs teaching. The principle realises this is Sahaiâs opportunity to remain a teacher and suggests he take up the offer to help Michelle.
Sahai arrives at the McNallyâs â but Michelleâs father does not approve of his eccentric teaching methods. The young actress who plays Michelle (Ayesha Kapoor) delivers a convincing performance. Her portrayal of a young girl suffocating in her blackness is nothing short of spectacular. Michelleâs mother (Shernaz Patel) allows Sahai to help her daughter and it is during Sahaiâs unusual teaching sessions that Kapoor blossoms in her performance.
The narrative structure then revolves around the relationship between teacher and pupil, and as the years move on, the lines between the teacher-pupil relationship become blurred.
Apart from dealing with the complexities of the teacher-pupil relationship, the film also attempts to deal with the themes of sibling rivalry and burgeoning femininity. However, Bhansali touches on these aspects fleetingly and one is left feeling bereft. Perhaps his camera could have lingered a little longerâ¦.?
The film is wonderfully conceptualised, with a beautiful storyline. The cinematography, costume and overall ambience of the film lent an aesthetic feel to the overall picture. Something which I personally found lacking was the absence of a sense of time and to an extent, location. This could have possibly, been a deliberate move on the part of the director to make it more timeless and thus, less - ephemeral.
I walked away from the theatre, with the realisation that acting is not only about the spoken word. Acting is also about movement â of the body, the eyes, the soul. And this is what Mukerji portrays brilliantly. She portrays the soul of a girl trapped in her own blackness.
The absence of sight, sound and speech in Michelleâs life alters the communication patterns of those around her. The audience then; actually feels a heightened sense of awareness. It is almost as if we can feel the blackness, hear the blackness and smell the blackness that envelops the audience throughout the filmâs emotive journey. At the end of the film, one realises that although black is traditionally used to connote darkness, one should appreciate the many colours that make up âthe blackâ.
