Valley Chai

i am back on my rental movie queue. this time it’s seventymm.com rather than netflix.com.

one movie that i so reluctantly tossed in my queue was BLACK by sanjay leela bansali. my wife was mostly disinterested, shying away from the fear of being depressed by the film. so i popped in the dvd into my home theater transplanted from the US with kids/maid/wife asleep.

the morning after, i couldn’t give a straight answer to my wife’s simple question “how did it end”? what would you say?

n/a is the answer. that the film is not about how it ends. it’s about how it runs. it is an experience of undelterated melancholy mixed with unreasonable hope. it’s an wilfull submission to desperation, and a celebration of sorrow as a vital dimension of human emotion. it’s a liberating experience of small wins, a welcome acceptance of human inter-dependence.

BLACK is a two-hour experience of emotions that we are taught to be ashamed to allow ourselves to experience. amitabh bachchan never was a more accomplished craftsman of film acting. rani mukherjee has never been more beautiful. the mood of a film has never been more honest and straight-from-the-gut.

call it a ‘multiplex film’, call it a ‘art film’, BLACK is a very hearty cenematic experience for those that dare to embrace it.