Bhansali’s Black is a classic case of sheer technique dictating content. Like Gowariker’s Swades, it suffers from the terrible Oscar fever that seems to have gripped Bollywood after Lagaan’s journey

Anurag Kashyap

After a long time I saw a film first day, first show. I walked into the theatre hoping for an electric atmosphere. The hall was anything but full, and the only occupants of seats in the vicinity, were a bunch obnoxious college kids, waved their hands and giggled uncontrollably from the moment the blind and deaf Michelle McNealy walked with measured steps towards the church.

I wish it had been just them. But as the movie went on, the whole experience brought me to a boil and I couldn't help screaming, "shut up, that's enough”. The film ended. My wife and I stepped outside, almost expecting snowflakes to softly invade our skin. "Not bad," I said to her. She nodded in agreement. “Not bad.” Maybe, being a film buff, I watch films too clinically.

Debraj, the character played by Amitabh Bachchan, was a tad over the top, theatrical; the story seemed obviously borrowed (The Miracle Worker first comes to mind); several frames reminded me of old black and white Bergman films, and the second half seemed to have alienated me completely. But, on the whole, small problems with a film that did provoke me to say "not bad". I couldn’t deny what the film had achieved.

Then the blitzkrieg began: “finally, a film that truly has Oscar potential, the best Hindi film ever made, Bachchan's best performance,” and so on. Considering the films that get a three star rating these days, I'd give it five-and-a half! Did I miss something?

What were these statements? And what did they mean? They didn’t come in ones and twos; they poured in by the tonne! Everyone was trying to say the same thing. What’s more people were buying it.

That’s when I thought, “Here we go again. We're about to lose yet another decent filmmaker.”

The director’s interviews followed, like thunderclouds on roller skates: “I rarely go wrong,” or “If you can't find flaws, don't criticise...” Words not very different from what I had heard Mr. Bhansali say the last time around: "My vision doesn't come cheap..."

These words weren't far removed from what I had heard Bhansali say the last time round: "My vision doesn't come cheap..."

The last time around, I remember being amused.

I found myself immersed in yet another soliloquy. I had questions but I had no answers. The question being, “Are we really so mediocre that when we see even a faint glint of straying from the formula we celebrate it like it's the final word in world domination.” We beat our chests, blow our trumpets and announce our arrival to the world all over again.

My problems with Black being acknowledged as the best of Indian cinema are simple. Was the focus of the filmmaker on the story of a girl who was deaf and blind or on the process through which her teacher helped her learn to communicate? In either case it needn’t have been in English, unless it was a preconceived convenience, for the American sign language the film used is based on the English language. A convenience that overtly undermines my intelligence as an Indian viewer, because the filmmaker is telling me that I won't understand his film if I don't understand English.
Also, it needn’t have been a costume drama, unless he was retelling the story of Helen Keller herself, which, apparently, he was not.

The filmmaker can very rightly point out that it is his film and he can choose to do whatever he wishes to. In that case, forgive me; his so-called 'sensitivity' misses the mark completely.

In the same vein of sensitivity Sparsh and Koshish are far more sensitive and superior films. Black looks down at you, says, “Look here, I'm sensitive. Be moved.”

I asked my self again, “Why is it so?” Was it because after being inspired by Miracle Worker, Bhansali didn't know how to convert or adapt the scenes into Hindi? It’s sad that we are increasingly losing our language. In the first instance, Hindi literature has almost disappeared and now we have come to a pass where we think in English, write in English and are even making an increasing number of films in English. We must be the only non-English speaking nation in the world expressing so much in that language. Is it because we are seeking some kind of approval from the West or are we so riddled with complexes and uncomfortable with ourselves that we take refuge in English in order to have a sense of belonging?

A-trophied? Gowariker

Is the reason Black is in English a justification for the character of Michelle McNealy and vice versa? Is her being a Christian the reason the film is in a colour palette of black and white and vice versa? Is that the reason for the period setting? And, is the period the reason for the language? Why am I asking so many questions? Because Black doesn't seem to be borne out of a need to sensitise the audience to the problems of the blind, the deaf and the mute, but to shock the country into sitting up and taking note of the technical brilliance of Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

If it is then it should say so honestly that Black is a first rate example of craft dictating content and not the other way round.

So, Bhansali has become the finest filmmaker in terms of technique in our country.

In that case, the statement of our learned film critic, Taran Adarsh, that the script doesn't do justice to the director's vision must be right. Which means the director is not an auteur. Which places him squarely in the same league as a certain Mr. Sanjay Gupta. And I'm sure he didn't want that.

Is the filmmaker to blame, or are we to blame? We, who define him so easily, so gloriously and so fast that we can't wait to pronounce Black a classic before it even has the chance to work towards becoming one.

The point I'm trying to arrive at is whether the Oscar nomination of Lagaan has made us a better filmmaking nation in any way? I don’t think so. It's almost like a child got a three-tiered chocolate cake when not even expecting an eclair. And everyone thinks that if Ashutosh Gowariker could get a taste of it then they deserve more. So everybody and their cousin has become experts on cinema and what it takes to get an Oscar. (I'm surprised there isn't a how-to book on the subject yet!)

What no one realises is that Lagaan was a film Ashutosh was ready to die for. He pursued the film for years and made it against mounting odds, because he believed in it. He wasn't expecting to make it to the Oscars, but he did. In the process of touring the world with Lagaan and experiencing the hysteria surrounding it, he thought he had hit upon a formula, long dead, of the real, rural, India. And he made Swades, but ‘We the people’ was further from the people than its predecessor. Swades had none of the innocence of Lagaan. It said, “I know what I'm doing. I'm here to change the world." It would have sufficed if the film had said, “I want to change the world. I know it's a tall order but give me a chance.” We have to pretend to love it for we might be deemed unpatriotic.

A 15-minute idea was made into a three hour indulgence and critics called it courageous. Making a 20-crore Swades with a wholly marketable Shahrukh Khan, post Lagaan is not courageous. Courage is putting millions of dollars into an Amelie with a veritably unknown Audrey Tautau post Alien:resurrection. Courage is making a 200 million Titanic with an uninitiated Leonardo Dicaprio, forfeiting your own fees in the process. Courage is a complete nobody making a Hyderabad Blues with everything he ever had and some more. Courage is not Swades. Courage was making Lagaan. Making Black does not signify courage. Courage was Sparsh and Koshish.

Cameos of Courage: Jaya Bhaduri and Sanjeev Kumar in Koshish

I admit courage need not, and at times does not, translate into great cinema. But it more often than not does translate into “inspiring” cinema. Neither Swades nor Black is in the realm of “inspiring” cinema. At best they are “aspiring” to be what they are not.

Black screams at the viewer, “Please look at me. I'm the best in cinema.” It fails to realise that beautiful photography is not necessarily good photography. That Hollywood cinema is not world cinema. That an Oscar does not put the stamp of unquestionable excellence on a film.

To the Indian audience Black is starting to become what Aishwarya Rai has become to the Western world. It mesmerises so completely with the way it looks that you forget for a moment that it doesn't represent what it ought to. You forget this reality for a minute, and soon the euphoria gathering around it like a storm makes you forget the reality for the rest of your life.

In reality, we make so many ordinary to bad films, that Black certainly seems better. But a heady concoction of beautiful lighting, sad dramatic characters, a self-proclaimed, demanding and often tragic filmmaker, a quaint setting, Charlie Chaplin posters, Robert Frost’s poetry, a supposed inspiration from the life of Helen Keller, and numerous pretensions of sensitivity don’t make for world-class cinema.

It is sad that we often lose our best filmmakers to the notion of greatness. It is ironic that vanity and megalomania can be the symptoms of the glamour that envelops our cinema and sometimes is also the reason for it.

What really breaks my heart is to see the outsiders fall by the wayside. We lose their world view, their independant, unpretentious take on life. We watch them getting eclipsed time and again by the insiders, who stand intact in their incestuous, self-congratulatory, uncle-aunt-brother-sister-son-nephew-in-law well of a world.

Today, at the very minute as you read this, Black has started to pick up at the box office (our self-proclaimed totem pole of cinematic greatness) every Truffaut-wannabe critic in the country will rejoice in it. They will twist their arms around and thump their own backs for the well-judged four stars they gave it.

On a day such as this, I can only hope we make better films than statements. Our best is far, far away from the world's best cinema. They are not even a mile within the threshold of the top 100 films of world cinema.

On a day such as this, we should turn away from the Oscar for a moment and pay some attention to another Oscar – Wilde who says, “there's no self confidence like ignorance.”

Amen.

The writer is the director of Paanch and Black Friday