A 2004-2005 CLASSIC : B L A C K

Hi Guys,

Anybody saw an English-Hindi Indian Film called BLACK

Its one of the recent CLASSICS in World Cinema.

Veering passionately away from the norm - creating an entirely new definition of entertainment and giving us a work of art that transcends every given qualification of the motion-picture experience - the Director has created a work that freezes all superlatives.

From the opening when the blind-and-deaf Anglo Indian Michelle runs into her old blind and dying teacher Debraj (Played by One and Only Superstar of the Millennium Actor Sir Amitabh Bachchan), "Black" clamps its emotional tentacles around our heart and refuses to release us until its last dying breath exhales on screen, permeating the film's fragrant and irradiant aura with fumes that we have never smelt before.

"Black" unleashes a fury of never-felt emotions. Master-creator that he is, Mr. Director peels away layers and layers of passionate pain. The characters stand stark naked on camera, their souls exposed for us to see. We can't turn away. Mr. Director doesn't give us that choice.

It takes a while to come to terms with the awesome and overpowering emotions of Mr. Director 's world. Getting a fix on Michelle's world isn't easy.

What is this twilight zone of resplendent suffering where every hurt is felt like a whiplash? Indeed the quality of cinematography and the background music is so steeped in the ethos of anxious yearnings, we feel the characters' hearts are forever on the verge of bursting open.

We first enter little Michelle's pitch-black world with Debraj. The relationship that grows between the impossibly difficult little girl (Her Performance BEST among all Child Artist acted internationally EVER) and the equally difficult teacher is underscored by an immense and acute irony.

As Debraj makes Michelle 'see' into the light through her blindness, he goes blind and finally loses his mind. In the best most heart-wrenching moments of the film, Michelle rattles the chains that are put on her guru to prevent him from causing himself bodily harm.

That frenzied chain rattling becomes symbolic of everything that Mr. Director 's incredibly grand cinema attempts to do. The darkest most inexpressible thoughts acquire shape in Mr. Director 's tortured and yet incredibly beautiful realm of self-expression.

Credit for giving shape to his vision goes in no small measure to Mr. Director 's technicians who miraculously find just the right voice for the director's anguished feelings.

As the narrative follows Michelle's progression from darkness to light, we move along in a choked and suffocated numbness, as though life in all its darkest shades had suddenly opened up in front of our eyes.

The film actually belongs to Sir Amitabh Bachchan. It's impossible to imagine any actor playing Debraj, the tutor of manic proportions raging into the darkness like a Shakespearean tragic-hero.

To say this is Bachchan's finest ever isn't enough. For, what he has done with his character in "Black" is to endow Indian cinema with a flavor of flamboyant excellence, unparalleled by anything we've seen any actor from any part of the world do or say...I say 'say' because the way Bachchan has used that well-known baritone has to be heard to be believed. Dropping his voice to a whisper he raises it again to challenge destiny, and toast immortality.

Every actor big or small creates an impression of imperishable excellence. There are innumerable moments of the purest, most classical cinema in "Black". Moments such as the ones where Michelle expresses sexual yearning or when the old and dying Debraj breaks into a jig with Michelle, tear a hole in our guts.

"Black" isn't a film that we can categorise or classify. It creates a new genre, which can tentatively be called Pain-Sublime. Rays of light pierce the black darkness of the protagonist's life and permeate into our lives to bathe us in a feeling of rapturous contentment rarely experienced in cinema before.

HATS OFF!!!!!!