Black

Cast: Amitabh Bhacchan, Rani Mukherjee; Direction: Sanjay Leela Bhansali (for those who wonder, he made Devdas, the most garish and loud presentation of the Bengali classic)

I'm yet to come across someone who hasn't liked Black. For the first time in a movie hall, I saw the entire audience giving a standing ovation for director's credits. And Outlook wrote 'Black is mesmerising the Indians'. Dinesh Saravanan said 'First Indian movie of international class'. Does Black deserve all this adulation and has SLB finally shirked off his Devdas taboo?

The answer is a big yes. For, the movie is a milestone in the mainstream Hindi cinema. I'm using the term mainstream quite relatively as I don't believe in this concept of parallel and commercial. Kamal Hasan once said that there is no commercial or art movie, there's only good and bad movie. He couldn't have been more apt. But I'm using the term mainstream with the meaning of the challenges it poses.

Considering that, Black is a huge leap. Black is about limited-abled people. Black is the first song-less Hindi film. Black runs only for two hours four minutes. Black does not have a love angle. Black's male lead is a 65 year old veteran. SLB should be really audacious enough to splurge 20 crores in all this. It's a mind numbing risk even in Varma-Mani Ratnam standards.

And mind you, it's not a dark depressing tale. Contrary to popular perception, it's about success at the end of a struggle and thinking of impossibility and achieving it. Almost about the same thing that SLB did. Thinking of such a theme with 20 crores and making it possible. Forget the critical success. I'm really glad to know that the movie is doing well commercially. The distributors are going to rake in much more than what they have invested in this film.

That's a good news for the advocates of good cinema. The confidence level of those wanting to make sensible cinema should be very high now.

So aren't there any black spots at all? The only complaint about the movie (even I complained about it while walking out of the hall) is it's unncessary visual splendour. The theme doesn't warrant such a huge canvass. And this people considered as SLB's compromise coz' the movie might look quite pale without the visual extravaganza. Here, I couldn't help recall an old movie, Meera, by PC Sreeram. Mind you, I'm not talking about the MS classic. Meera was a wonderfully picturised film without any story. Balu Mahendra (of Sadma fame) dubbed it as 'a bunch of picture postcards'. Think of Black in that background. Black offers what Meera lacked. It combines a beautiful, heard-wrenching story with a spectacular visual treat. If, you think SLB has compromised, well, I'm glad he did.