Black - the movie

We watched Black on Sunday morning. Of late, we've started watching Hindi movies at the Sunday matinee slot at Bedok. Couple of reasons: it leaves our evenings free to go out with friends, and it costs less :)

Sa hates watching Hindi movies with me; while I normally enjoy the movies as escapism, she gets totally absorbed in them, and I tend to spoil her experience by whispering my comments to her about things I find ridiculous in the movie. Naturally these being Hindi movies, I have a LOT of comments, and naturally she gets very irritated.



Black shut me up, and I was quiet for the complete 2 hours and twenty minutes. Well, quiet except for the occasional sniffle; I can unashamedly say that I spent a fair amount of time alternately wiping the tears away from my eyes (discreetly, of course), and praising everything about the film: the concept, the execution, the acting, the technical excellence - everything was brilliant.

Amazing performances from Rani Mukherji (my favourite actress, but now I've realised she can act as well as look gorgeous), Amitabh Bachchan's best performance ever (and there have been some blinders in the past), and a revelation in the form of little Ayesha Kapoor.

I had a couple of small complaints about the movie though. One was in the way Michelle's environment was set up. Throughout the movie, I was not very clear where and in what time the movie was set - there were period costumes, old cars, Chaplin movies in old theatres, Hindi dialogues, English dialogues, British accents, Christian names... This had two effects on me - it tended to make the movie timeless and placeless, in the sense that the story could have happened anywhere and anytime. The director probably deliberately did this with the intention of focusing the audience's attention on the story and the characters. But it had the effect of niggling away at my brain throughout the movie.

The second complaint was Rani's Chaplin-like gait. That was quite silly I thought; I haven't seen any blind or deaf people walking awkwardly like that. But it's a minor thing, and didn't detract much from the movie itself.

You can read more thoughts (not mine) about the movie