BLACK & WHITE
REALITY BITES

Rating:

My Dear Subashji,

I am a pucca bakht of yours. Time has changed and interestingly your cinema has also taken a sort of a punar janam.

Sirji, right from the day movies became a part of my school bunking syllabus, I like a true blue bollywood bhakt later turned into a kida has devotionally followed your films. My very first meeting with your cinema was a relishing experience called ‘Karz’, which I intend to cherish & carry through all of my janams in any form.

Sir, how can I ever forget that you made me feel like a ‘Hero’, and also made me dance to your ‘Taal’. You ruled the box-office and were a true ‘Vidhaata’ of fortunes for Jackie, Sanjay.

Your mahimaa as a master story teller has always placed you taller than your contemporaries.

Sirji, now you have changed, the film maker Ghai has become a corporate Guy. Obviously, now you hardly get any time to shout light camera & action and I waited for three years to watch your brilliance on the marquee. Pardon me for being big mouthed and ignorant but Sirji, you have disappointed me with your paradigm shift. Your lavish scale, mounting, sets, costume, drama, melodrama was lacking in your message film.

But Sir, you deserve all the praise for the change and you have done it with style and slickness. But one thing keeps on disturbing me every now & then after watching ‘Black & White’, Sir, if you really wanted to cross the escapist boundaries and showcase sensible, meaningful & quality cinema then you could have nurtured an all together different subject, something out of the box, a real surprise, a shocker.

Going by the amount of resources available at your doorstep & your expertise you could have set an example in this genre too& would have come out with flying colours but you have disappointed by choosing only ‘Black & White’  

Sir, I am sorry to say that ‘Black & White’ even fails in this genre of cinema.
The plot of a fidayeen Numair Qazi (Anurag Sinha – fine debut) commissioned by a Muslim fundamentalist group to detonate a bomb near Red Fort on 15th August gets his brain washed but this time for good & comes to term with the fact, truth & propaganda concerning humanity & its religion, when he encounters (Rajan Mathur (Anil Kapoor- excellent ) a Professor in Urdu literature in Dr. Zakir Hussain's College & his activist wife, Roma Mathur (Shefali Shah – too good). Has been experienced by us before. 

When Professor Mathur introduces Numair to the warm and loving people of Chandni Chowk who coexist with fun, music, love and colorful events and festivals irrespective of their religion. Which include Shagufta(Aditi Sharma – So So ), a modern Muslim college girl, Rahat, a Sufi pop singer, Miya (Habib Tanvir – brilliant) an 84-year-old who is full of patriotism. The fidayeen admidst all the tension gets caught in an emotional dilemma & the rest is predictable Sirji.

The romance angle lacked charm and the sudden change in the fidayeen’s attitude and thinking was not convincingly explained. Without taking much of your valuable time, & disturbing you further, I will not take the names of ‘The Terrorist’ movie which were somewhat similar.

But Sir, Your panache for music always blends with times and this time you have extracted some real soothing music from Sukhwinder Singh.

I have already taken home ‘jogi aaya re’ and thank you for that.

I would like to make a humble request
Sir, pls come back with your prolific flamboyance & give us the much needed moment to cheer and whistle. And also give your darshan as it was your practice earlier. Sir, you have changed so much that you forgot to cast yourself for a moment in the film?
How can you deprive this honest bakht of yours?
Sir, kindly consider my consideration.

Sir, if you are still reading this then I will conclude with words ‘Good Ghai But Bad Try’

Cinematically Yours

Vishal Verma

Note: EOE expected

Copy To: All India Bollywood Fanatics Association