BLACK FRIDAY – A REVIEW!!!
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So folks,
Concluded a largely successful screening of Black Fiday tonite in the beautiful Century Berryessa Theater in San Jose. The numbers surpirsed me from a Bay Area perspective. In last count there were 96 people, we don’t generally have that many. Noted Art Director Sharmishta Roy, was my guest. Ok now on to the review
Firstly let me inform you that Kunal Kohli’s review on Mid Day, Shekhar Kapur’s assessment on the film, Mahesh Bhatt’s assessment on the film, etc meant nothing to me (including the stuff being written in this blog), in fact Kunal Kohli and I were batchmates in HR College of Commerce in Mumbai and if he says something is good, I take the opposite view in life. Likewise Mahesh Bhatt is all about being a self proclaimed ”protector of the underdog.” I went in to the movie with a WHATEVER, let me judge view? Shekahr Kapur is all about quotes and those have no effect on me.
I am not a genre specialist, all I know and have been trained in is Scriptwriting. I don’t know whether this movie is a documentary, docu-drama, etc and I don’t give a rat’s back side. What I do know is, wearing the audience cap, does this movie captivate me, does it propel me to not take a restroom break even when i want to go, does it keep me glued to my seat, eagerly awaiting what is next….or does it not…genre , etc be dammed.
And the answer most definitely was a RESOUNDING YES!!! It did all of that to me. It kept me waiting for what is going to unfold in front of my eyes. A curisoisty, not because it was about a city I loved, but it was like reading an intersting visual book. In fact when the interval came, I was slightly edgy, what’s going to happen next, why do we need an interval…get on with it, to me the sign of perfect attention grabbing.
It was intense, yes, but not excessively dramatic intense. It was real, yes, it was fair, yes, it gave a pretty balanced view of things and alomost told it and then let you decide what to make out of it. The subject matter was captivating, it was an event which no Bombayite will ever, in their living memory forget. Did it revive old wounds? No. But it did capture the essence of what really happened on that fateful day. Is it all accurate? Not sure, but it gives enough information for the audience to processs the facts. It is not excessively gory, yet it tells the extent of the damage. It’s a human story, and humans are prone to be heores sometimes, villians the others, cause they are humans and it is the story of the people who planned and executed the whole scenario and the people who went about solving the mystery and the mayhem and both seem to be just going about their job.
The cops chasing the suspect across the length and breadth of the slums, had a tinge of humour, yet it was dark enough cause the person being chased had a hand in washing out 300 lives from this planet.
The cops doing their job, seemed ruthless, yet as an audience you could not help but commend these folks, who for close to or less than the US minimum wage, go about their jobs in all the intensity, in all their dedication.
Were there negatives, absolutely. The whole scenario of justification of why Badshah Khan becomes what he becomes, was excessive and could have been dealt with in a couple of scenes. Also around 10-15 mts could have been shaved off the film, but I have to admit, the attention to details was awesome. The bus that blows up is BEST route number 86 (written in Marathi) on the top right hand side. That bus indeed does that route and that too in front of the Passport Office where it did blow up.
From a personal perpective it was scary since, at least 3-4 of those places where the blast occurred, were places I used to visit at least once a week in my 20 years in Mumbai, yes including the #86 which I used to catch to go from Pedder Road to Shivaji Park for the tennis game, including Century Bazaar, also called ironically Happy Home, before being blasted away and including the Bombay Stock Exchange.
From an acting perpective it was great to see Pawan Malhotra back in action. I still remember him from Nukkad. I think Anurag also put in a cameo in the Boat scene (I could be wrong) and there was Chutki, from the FIRST serial of television HUM LOG. Cause indeed this was the movie about a disasterous day in Mumbai’s history and how the HUM LOG threw up, from within themselves the heroes and the villians.
Great, crisp direction and screenplay. A job well done.
Sincerely,
Vivek “ok so once I agree with Kohli/Bhatt/Kapur” Kumar
S
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
hey Vivek, thanks for your take on BF. any possibility of some sound or video bytes from the screening fete?
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The folks from TV Asia were there and took my interview after the screening, if it is not edited I can share it with you folks. I am technologically challenged so might seek your assistance in loading the tape once I get it from them.
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Vivek,
Thanks for the review! I completely agree with the point about one not being able to take a restroom break even if one wanted to..
I am one of the many people who have (fortunately or unfortunately) seen the movie much before its release, albeit on pirated, low-quality, bad-sound, bad-picture dvd version.
I was floored by the movie back then, as much for the cinematic prowess, as for the novelty and surprise factor.. and the fact that it broke all barriers with respect to ‘characters being fititious and resemblance being unintentional’
Now that so much has already been said and talked about the movie and this very factor, I hope people’s expectations do not reach a point where they get disappointed because it does not have an element of ‘mystery’ or that ’storytelling is amiss’.
Some of my friends to whom I lent the dvd, had similar observations – they thought it was more of a documentary, and while they liked the content, they thought it wasnt a great movie. I know, these people know noting about cinema and the art beind it, but these constitute the public.
I sincerely hope that BF gets much more that what it is already assured of getting, viz. critical acclaim – Here’s wishing for popular appeal for the movie!
Cheers,
Nirav
PS: I loved the whole Badshah Khan sequence by the way!
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@Vivek: Yes, It is AK indeed on the ship doing a cameo.Cheers!
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Guys,
below is NY TIMES review and also got favorable reviews at Metacritic.com site for Movies. Keep it up AK!!
Madness in Mumbai
By MATT ZOLLER SEITZ
Published: February 8, 2007
Epic and raw, “Black Friday” is cut from the same bloody cloth as “Salvador” and “Munich.” Although it’s a period piece set in 1993, its subject matter couldn’t be more urgent: how religious hatred (in this case, between India’s Hindu majority and Muslim minority) manifested itself in institutionalized discrimination, race rioting and ultimately a series of terrorist bombings by Muslim guerrillas that killed 257 people in Mumbai, the nation’s financial and filmmaking capital. (History repeated itself last year, when bombings killed 186 people in Mumbai.)
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Readers
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Thanks Kunesh… the US Reviews are linked at Metacritic….
http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/blackfriday?q=black%20friday
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Hollywood reporter compares it to Battle of Algiers exactly what Khalid Mohamed did.
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oz even NY times has compared it to Battle of Algiers
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Kunal Kohli and Khalid Mohamed… Huh
I so.. wish that these buggers hated Black Friday.
Y’know, the Kohli guy actually thought Hum Saath Saath Hai was ‘touching’! And Mr.Pansy had written that Kabhi Khushi Kabhi…….. was magical!!
Film critcs? nah….Pimps, Purveyors of kitch!!!
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the kunal kohli types who are endorsing black friday
want to have their own piece of cake through its success…
they want to tell teh world that they understand such cinema ..every once in a while you will see these types praising to hilt movies such as black friday
and sometimes go overboard with that(i m not talking abt kunal kohli saying anurag u deserve an oscar)…and ya talking of oscars …if that is the only measure of how good a movie is
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Suuren HSSH was touching. What’s wrong with that? You may not like the genre but there are many who liked both Vivah and HSSH. If at all anything, these are honest movies.
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Read a few reviews on it.
They’re very good… will have to wait for the dvd as no cinema is showing it here!!
Oh well…
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It would be great if someone like acquarello or Girish Sambhu adds a review on their sites. It would open the doors for this movie to western audience. The words of mouth can do wonders for this film. If anyone here knows them personally, it would be great. Who knows AK’s future films might be produced by CANAL+. I watched it on pirated version (Sorry Anurag).
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Freighting good (Viewer perspective)
Waking up at early 9 does not come naturally to me sleep and Black Friday has been as elusive as desirable to me.
Anurag and I have a common cause of anxiety, pain, anger and frustration. If he as a film maker has felt cheated and let down so did I as fan, as viewer who always demanded more but had to settle down with mediocrity in the name of cinema. A cinema which never dared to looked into the soul of its viewer.
As if a secret pact has taken place between viewer and film makers.
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But no such measures were required as my father got soon sucked into the marvelously directed and enacted first interrogation scene never was silence to unnerving. What took the cake was reaction of the fellow who played Asgar mukadam when Kay kay offered him the tea. Who ever that actor was the fear he portrayed the way his body cringe to the silence around him and then he himself ask
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I had the good fortune of watching Black Friday when it premiered @ The Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, 2005.
Here is the review I had posted on my blog then:
http://sams_world.rediffblogs.com/2005_17_04_sams_world_archive.html
And I can’t wait for Sunday to go to Naaz, Artesia to catch it on the big screen one more time!!
Kudos to AK.
And Oz, please reply to my mail soon so that I also can start contributing to PFC!
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