Seceding the colours of life, to fight about what is black and what is white. Tagore’s review of Black & White.

Alright my fellow cine-goers, pop-corn eating, cola sipping folks, who so well keep alive the business of cinema. Thank you. Nope, I’m not being corny in the slightest. I started this review with the above line because I had about another 30 people with me in the cinema when I went to watch the film I’m about to review. I’m sad that we as ‘desi’-folk (that includes all Bollywood speaking people) are still not throwing in a lot more appreciation to the new breed of film-makers, making more sensible cinema that has been long over-due. Instead, I know the houses will be packed when another ’stale’ film comes out with a huge NRI wedding, set across India, the UK and America. The story will be the same, the emotions the same, the music just techno and ‘bhangra’ beats married together, looped in one major orgasm that we ‘janta’ will end up calling a ’solid-hit’!!. So in the midst of all those ‘Bollywood’ bright colours, are we going to notice the ‘Black’ & the ‘white’? Read on…

Reel Life – The film is about a guy, who is very sure about what he represents. He represents his interpretation of Islam with all his sincerity. He dislikes those followers of Islam who follow it hypocritically as much as he dislikes those who do not follow Islam. In his world, he believes that this is the right attitude. Somewhere along, he becomes a member of a group that feels that creating destruction amongst ‘their’ non-believers is their right, in the name of religion. So the lad comes over to India to carry out a mission. He lives in Delhi’s ‘Chandani Chowk’, which boast of being one of the most secular places in the country. Though he sees life in all her glorious colours and meets fellow Muslims who are secular in their lives and other Muslims who in his opinion are hypocrites, he is extremely focused on his mission. He has no time for romance, no time for emotions and no time to be nice to the man and woman who want to teach him to smile. In the end, the man doesn’t go thru with his mission, which comes across as a real shocker, but he escapes and goes back to the world of fundamentalism that he came from. He however sends across a message on the lines that he learnt something about life, while he was in this country for a short while. Also one of the closing dialogues really stands out and that is when a innocent man is being held responsible for helping this guy escape, and when he is asked why, the man says “They (the fundamentalist) sent one of their own from their world into ours with their message, and we sent him back to them from our world with our message”. I quiet liked that.

Real Life – Oh there is a lot of stuff that we must take from this film. First of all, we have been created by God, and we as this creation will never be able to understand the entire beauty and love of our God. We never seem to understand, we never want to even look at all the colours that our God has bestowed upon us, instead we throw aside ALL those colours and set to war holding in our stupid visions what is black and what is white. Pathetic!! And I know, that you agree with me on this. We have stooped so low, that we have raped our own spirituality by using the name of religions, and in that we set to war, we instigate hatred and ofcourse our politicians fill their pockets. This is not about those politicians though, is it? It never has been, this my brothers and sisters is about the likes of YOU and ME, about ALL of US. Secondly, this film beautifully reminds us of the fact that every sect of people, be is races, colours, communities and specially religions have the odd ‘are-holes’ who abuse the beauty that we were given in the first place. That’s what discrimination, racism; sexism is all about, isn’t it? I recently did a ‘peace show’ in my hometown Goa and in there I said something that I would like to share with you here – Every time we see a rainbow we smile, now could there be a possibility that we are God’s own rainbow here on earth? So if we are, and lets just kid ourselves that we are, so if we are then I would like to believe that HE smiles too when he looks at us. In that case, why are we wiping out / destroying the colour of this rainbow, by killing in the name of colors, sexes, caste and religions? And since when has the colour of blood been a colour of this rainbow? Wake up my most beloved fellow human beings, call me naive, call me what you want, BUT take this message with you and ponder on it. I pray that you are touched by it and then pass it on to your world, and specially the children. They are the reason why we need to make this world a better place. Cool?

Cinematically – Oh well, now this is a different story all together. Though I must say, that I truly and humbly ‘Salute’ our very own Mr. Ghai. Come on. He is ‘the’ showman. He has made some of the biggest films of recent decades. He has worked with the biggest stars and canvases. He has ‘fueled’ Bollywood to take her to the status where she is today, i.e. the big stars. The huge canvases, the great music scores etc. Here he is with a strong ‘realistic’ story, a new discovery, a favourite actor and a canvas much smaller in comparison. Subhash-ji has boldly stepped into the off-beat and realistic world of Indian cinema, and man to do that, at that stature, you need to have the guts, and this man has it. Thank you Mr. Ghai. The film itself is well paced, but there seem to be to many short-cuts. The end of the film was a let down, not because of the turn it took, but there was no build-up towards it and that made it non-convincing. That’s a real shame. Also the end scenes of the film really lacked good direction and acting. Even though he wanted to play certain scenes subtle, they were just not convincing. Don’t get me wrong I liked the subtle approach, but neither the acting and/or direction was convincing. From the acting perspective, Shefali Shah was really good. I think it’s probably her best work that I have seen. Anil Kapoor does carry a few scenes well, but I think he has let himself down in the scenes that mattered the most. Sorry Anil-ji, I do believe that you could have pulled those scenes off much better. Now this new kid – Anurag Sinha. What a debut? The guy is good. I do not want to praise him yet, but yes he is good. He sends a chill down your spine, just using his expressions at times. There are actors and there are stars in our industry. Let’s see his next film to see if he is an actor. On the whole, I would like the entire world to see this film. I think if you look beyond the few cinematic flaws, it’s a great message of human victory. Do go and watch it, it’s not that long. But yes, Subhash-ji could have done this a lot better, and I say that not as a negative statement, but truly knowing that this man could have done a lot more with this.

My name is Tagore Almeida, and I am based out of lovely Dubai. I am a technologist in my day job, and a film-writer by night. I run a humanitarian group called ‘The Uncultured Company’ too, read more about me and my work at www.tagorealmeida.com.