Black & White: Old stale beer in new bottle
iView Author:
Azad
(Banglore, India)
Email:
azad.ksingh [at] gmail [dot] com
Black & White: Old stale beer in new bottle
From the very first frame, I got a feeling that this is going to be another Ghai misadventure. But the situations are slightly different this time. Instead of serving his misadventure as a larger than life story with larger than life characters, he disguises this current film of his as a real life portrayal of harmony and secularism.
The plot of the film is straight out of coffee table discussions among page 3 ladies, who on one fine day, decide to talk about terrorism rather than their choice of perfumes. Where else you hear that terrorists are trigger happy people, who can kill anyone anywhere. No where else you will hear lines like these “kissi ka khoon karne se pehle 2 sec ke liye apne bachchon ki taraf dekh lo, kabhie kissi ka khoon nahi kar paaoge”(Before committing a murder, spare 2 secs to have a look at your children. You will never commit a murder again). Who else will come up with an idea of adopting a brother from a different religion to portray secularism? I don’t say that these kinds of people don’t have the right to talk about terrorism, but before serving one’s opinion to the general public, one should be thorough with his/her home work.
The film is about a dreaded terrorist, who is on a mission to bomb the Red Fort on 15th August. During his stay in Delhi, he befriends an urdu professor of Zakir Hussain College (is this in any way related to SAR Geelani) who happens to be a hindu with a patriotic and a secular heart. With 15 days to go before the bombing, the terrorist finds refuge in professor’s house. The rest of story deals with his discovery of India and communal harmony. A major part of the film deals with the interaction between the terrorist and the professor.
Such plots have almost always managed to hold my attention, especially if the interaction between contrasting duos is used effectively. And to pull of such scenes you need a strong screenplay and a very strong set of dialogues. On the contrary, the dialogues of the film are so cheeky and clichéd that it gives you a feeling of watching the saas bahu sagas. Almost each of the lines have been spoken twice to emphasize the view point to the viewers. The constant talk and over the top references of secularism and communal harmony looks too stupid to appreciate. The scene, where shefali shah slaps the local muslim leader, is classic example of the same.
The only scenes worth watching, in the whole movie, are those of Habib Tanver. The man is blessed with such a strong baritone and screen presence that you forget to look or hear beyond him, when he is on screen. Anurag(the lead actor) looks like a Kay Kay clone and acts like an 100th carbon copy of Kay Kay. He looks more confused and puzzled than looking dreadful. This should not come as a surprise as the dialogues that he was given to mouth and hear would puzzle anyone. This is his first film and he still has a long way to go. Hoping to watch some decent performances from him in near future. There is nothing much to talk about the rest of the star cast.
Talking about Black Friday and Black & White in the same frame is no less than a blasphemy, but the reviews written by some prominent reviews have forced me to do so. I hated it then, when reviews of Black Friday were filled with praises, not for its cinematic brilliance, but for the neutrality of the stand taken by the film maker. And I hate it now, when reviewers chose to ignore the cinematic catastrophe in exchange for the novelty of the idea. An execution of idea gone wrong can be pardoned, as was the case with Halla Bol. But trying to pass on a film, as clichéd and stupid as Black & White, as an intelligent and thought provoking film is an unpardonable crime.
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
The movie sort of lost steam in the 2nd half i feel.Some of the important pre-climax sequences didn’t have the same impact
well said azad!!!!!
“Almost each of the lines have been spoken twice to emphasize the view point to the viewers” :d:d
Nice review, Azad. Mr.Ghai has lost it. I still don’t understand why people praise him as Showman and all. Most of the reviewers have given decent/good ratings to B&W, even rediff’s Raja Sen.
I too fail to understand why people regard him as the showman.IMO, The only watchable film of his from the recent past is Taal. And the credit for Taal goes to AR Rahman more than to Ghai.
In fact I dont think highly of most of his earlier movies as well, except perhaps for Hero.
KARZ – his best ever. The musical riff as a leitmotif, reincarnation but “Shakl Anjaan thi”, Simi in a most amazing negative role, Rishi’s best effort.
pretty good review .
the dialogues , acting and direction are as subtle as a giant Gong being hammered .
the scene where Anil Kapoor pops up in front of the sniperman targetting the terrorist is pretty amusing .. anil kapoor shouting “kisse marna chahte ho ???? kisse ???? kisse ???? kisse (in slow mo)” .. and the sniperman is listening to him .. lol
“the scene where Anil Kapoor pops up in front of the sniperman targetting the terrorist is pretty amusing “…:d:d:d:d
I liked Karz and Taal was mediocre except for ARR’s music.
Black and white is nothing but idealistic bullshit
i dont understand there has to be a silly love story in every indian movie having such a serious topic!!!
i dont understand why there has to be a silly love story in every indian movie having such a serious topic!!!
The moment you see Subhash Ghai’s name anywhere on the credits, run miles away…
He is worse than the chopras.
My nostrils inflate automatically when somebody says that Karz music was superb ( more when Ghai says that )…for me it was pure NOISE. I find no difference between the music of say, the song “John Johnny Janardan” & any song in Karz ( For example the music in the antaras and interludes of the otherwise sublime tune of Dard e dil ).
I agree that the tunes of Laxmi in Karz, were superb but the orchestration was simply jarring. It applies to many LP albums.
as per news on rediff, BNW has been declared tax free in delhi. Ghai is trying hard to get this movie accepted by the viewers, but this time gimmicks will not work.