BLACK: A somewhat black experience

All perfect screen (the computer) and no noisy screen (the TV) makes jack a ... I don't know what.... boy. So, I have been watching quiet a few TV movies lately. And my recent fever had assisted that by making me stay at home.

Latest, I saw 'Bhagban' - it’s a good movie. Even after seeing it previously, I enjoyed the latter half again. And then I started thinking movies... when my mind touched upon Black.

And I decided to scribe down my thoughts about it, before I go out of mood.

For those who don’t know, it's a movie about a blind and deaf girl and her teacher who taught her to recognise, read, write and speak. At the end, the teacher himself falls to Alzheimer's disease and the girl now attempts to re-teach him what he once taught her. That's the ending note.

Black had managed some unprecedented critical media acclaim for a Bollywood production. So I was already over-blown with expectations when the curtains were being raised in the theatre.

I'll get bluntly to the point. The movie simply disappointed me. It's a good movie - better than most of what they make. And but for my already inflated expectations, I would probably have been satisfied.

I can summarise in one sentence why I was disappointed with this movie. It failed to stop time. That's it. That’s the only thing I have arrived upon by speculations. The plot had real potential. No doubt. But it never did actually let me get 'inside' the matter fully. To a blind and deaf girl, time should have been something not properly felt. Now and again, the movie paved a way for this. But every time, it finally failed to actually hold the time, in essence of making the protagonist cherish the experiences of discovering. The pace seemed too fast. I wanted to feel the joy of cognition through the mind of that child (that is, as far as one possibly can from my position).... but the screenplay always pushed new stuff in front of me. It should have dwelt a bit more slower and deeper on some specific areas. That's what I think. It should have stopped the 'real time'.

The plot had some side-plots, with equal or greater potential. Like the life of the sister of the abnormal child. She is a victim. Awfully deprived. Her fault? That she is absolutely normal - very much like any other healthy girl. Her otherwise perfectly normal existence is completely shadowed - by the triumph and glory over untreaded heights of human abilities displayed by her staggeringly disabled sister.

Another thing which the movie touched upon very lightly is the sexuality of the disabled girl when she grows up. That's an area which I really dread to tread. Her feminism. (Here by 'feminism' I actually mean all that is about being the female, the way I think this word should have always meant. Not in the meaning the word is used in current socio-political context.) This was a vital point, but the movie really didn’t have much options. (And also, it would gave gone off-track from the main plot.)

The movie didn't have any musical tracks in it. A good thing probably.

That's my feelings about 'BLACK'. It did one last good thing for me - I looked up Helen Keller on the net.