Black & White

Black & White is an attempt by Subhas Ghai to make a film on a real issue. Well…it is a case of "missed opportunity" for this popular director who needs to grow out of the usual "filmy" sensibilities to make realistic films on real issues.

MERITS of Black & White

1 – I like the idea of a murderer (in this case an Islamic terrorist) who is out on a mission to cause mayhem (bomb blast during Independence day) but changes his/her heart & mind when s/he comes in contact with people of the right kind.

DEMERITS of Black & White (unfortunately more Demerits than Merits)

1 – The story is very poorly presented by Subhas Ghai. It should have been as realistic, gripping and non-melodramatic like Satya or Company (two of the greatest films in Hindi cinema).

2 – Poor acting by the central character, Numair Qazi played by Anurag Sinha (in the role of an Afghan terrorist). He hardly injects fear or hatred in the audience. It is just plain ordinary acting. He also did not have the right looks.

Please compare this fellow's acting with J. D. Chakravarthy (of Satya), and you will know what I mean. Even Angad Bedi would have have been a better choice.

3 – Numair's men kill Anil Kapoor's wife in his house, but later when he discovers his murdered wife he behaves in a strange way. He cries in a very odd manner (in the presence of Numair). He does not even show any inclination to know WHO has murdered his wife and FOR WHAT (Numair knew who did it but stood silently still). He cremates her body without informing anyone.

Later we were informed in a rather casual and flimsy manner about the fact that Anil may've disposed of the body quietly in order to prevent Hindu-Muslim communal riot.

What infantile nonsense is this?

4 - Shefali Shah's (Anil Kapoor's wife) melodramatic acting "sticks out like a Sore Nose" in a 2-hour film based on a serious concept. Even in supposedly serious scenes she is melodramatic. Pathetic!

5 – It is strange that an established actor like Milind Gunaji is used very sparingly in the film.

6 – At the end of the film you may feel like it was "stretched" a bit too far than necessary, even though the film is just 2 hours long.

Even if you've not seen Black & White don't worry you have NOT missed or will not miss anything at all! Black & White is just a casual, bland and unconvincing attempt by Subhas Ghai to do something different from his usual masala films.

The fact is he is just not cut out to make the kind of realistic, to-the-point, and "non-filmy" films that a Ram Gopal Verma or a Vishal Bharadwaj can make.

"Black and White" directed by Subhash Ghai is about a Muslim terrorist from Afghanistan who aspires to come to India and cause a Hindu massacre. Anurag Sinha, who plays this role, looks as shady and dangerous as the role permits him to, from the moment he first steps out of that train ,into Delhi. He lives undercover in a friend's house, changing his identity so that he's not discovered. All the Muslims around seem to know his secret, although they don't know how mean and fanatical he is. This is a man purely acting on revenge, and not reason. Anyways, Anil Kapoor plays a kind-hearted professor that has a lot of tolerance. You can imagine when he is Hindu and has the Quran memorized. Now, the regular Indian clichéd plot of this movie would be that Anil Kapoor influences the terrorist so much with his compassion and love, that the terrorist doesn't end up bombing the Hindu temple and killing all those people. Although the movie works towards this ending, the terrorist doesn't. Sinha's face is pretty much that of a terrorist: his expression is dead serious. I can't imagine him hugging anyone or even smiling. It looks so ridiculous when Aditi Sharma (a Muslim girl who loves him) imagines them running around on a train, hugging and laughing at each other. The general fantasy and dreamy spirit that wells up inside of me when listening to such songs, wasn't there…it didn't work as well as I wanted it to.

Let us first understand that the movie saw a lot of downs. Its lead actors (supposedly Akshay Khanna and Hrishita Bhatt) left, leaving the roles to be fulfilled by raw newcomers (Anurag Sinha and Aditi Sharma). 2 of its directors left the movie - it was eventually completed by Subhash Ghai as a favor to Anil Kapoor. A movie which was supposed to be released in 2003 was pushed out to 2008 with many reshoots, an entirely raw climax and a poorly edited script. But the movie has some great moments. and The Songs are exceptional - very good lyrics and an unbelievable music score by Sukhwinder Singh (I seriously have doubts that music was actually written by somebody else, and credited to Sukhwinder). The range of songs from soulful to party like to Indie Rock. As a music album, it is a must store.

The movie speaks about one among the biggest concerns of the nation India is facing over decades. Anil Kapoor's characterisation is simply outstanding and can be taken as a great source of inspiration and fight the evil thoughts and bury them to extinction.

Even the overall story narration and acting by the leads in the film Anil Kapoor and Shefali is Unbelievable!

Subhash Ghai's Black & White is an amateurish effort from a filmmaker clearly out of his depth as far as his subject matter is concerned. The film follows the story of a suicide bomber who seeks refuge in the home of an unsuspecting professor, while all along involved in a plot to blow-up the Red Fort. Loosely inspired by the Harrison Ford-Brad Pitt starrer The Devil's Own, Ghai's film explores the relationship between a terrorist and the couple who open their home and their hearts to him. Well-intended the film may be, but at plot level itself there's a fundamental flaw with Black & White, and that flaw is the writer-director's sheer inability to set the tone of the film. Opening on a note that's so pretentious you want to puke, Ghai uses redundant symbolism—like a child with a candle—to make a point that's been made so many times before. To top that, his every character is a caricature that spouts clichés instead of dialogues. Take Anil Kapoor playing the Urdu professor, for instance. How you cringe at those long sermons he delivers, and then his shameless hamming, especially in that scene where the professor returns home one night to discover a horrible brutality committed on his wife. Not that Shefali Shah, playing the professor's activist wife is much better. Hysterical for the most part, she's so over-the-top even in comic and supposedly emotional scenes, you want to remind her, this is film not street theatre where melodrama can be used to great effect. Newcomer Anurag Sinha, who plays the mysterious stranger with dishonourable intentions, has an arresting screen presence, undeniably, but straitjacketed in a loosely developed role he has little scope to really perform — unless you count his brooding and that 'angry young man' impression as a performance. Black & White falls like a pack of cards because it's meant to be a serious, even realistic film, a departure from Ghai's trademark masala musicals. But problem is the director is so unfamiliar and uncomfortable with minimalism that he cannot resist the urge to throw in some of his typical formulas, as a result delivering a film that is both confused and sloppy. Look at that presumably symbolic scene in which a deaf-mute child plays out a patriotic tune on her piano to a man just hours away from committing a ghastly act of terror. Or that supposedly comic scene in which an elderly poet makes repeated telephone calls to the professor's home late one night. Or even that indulgent dream song between the terrorist and the young student who's clearly falling for him. The sad thing is, for a film that was meant to address an issue, Black & White doesn't say anything that you don't already know. The film makes only token nods to patriotism, and if you ask me, I'd say the very themes of terrorism, patriotism and nationalism are just incidental to Ghai's story which is in fact, about the power of goodness and love which can convert even the serious non-believers. And that, my friends, let's not forget, is one of mainstream Bollywood's oldest and favourite themes. So you see Ghai never ventured too far from his comfort zone anyway.It's a miscalculation in every sense of the word, a film that makes Kisna and Yaadein seem watchable. When it comes to Subhash Ghai, I'd much rather watch his masala musicals any day.