{"id":230,"date":"2005-02-11T06:02:48","date_gmt":"2005-02-11T00:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/blog\/2005\/02\/11\/black-no-equal\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T14:10:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T08:40:17","slug":"black-no-equal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/2005\/02\/black-no-equal\/","title":{"rendered":"Black, No Equal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>India makes more movies each year than any other country in the world.\u00a0 Yet, if I had to choose one movie from all the ones made in Bollywood, past or present, it would have to be Sanjay Leela Bhansali\u2019s <span style=\"font-style:italic\">\u2018Black\u2019<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Black\u2019 is the story of a deaf-blind-mute child who\u2019s on the verge of going insane because she cannot communicate with any one.\u00a0 Then, an ageing, alcoholic teacher comes into her life.\u00a0 And, he starts working with her, painstakingly and patiently teaching her words and their meanings\u2026 one word at a time. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019ve ever known a physically- or mentally- challenged child at close quarters, you probably would have glimpsed how difficult the simplest task can become. But to overcome obstacles, and grow beyond the limitations that our circumstances impose on us, is the greatest achievement that man is capable.<\/p>\n<p>This is not a subject that Bollywood often addresses. \u2018Black\u2019 does not have the usual song-and-dance routines found commonly in typical Indian films &#8211; in fact, the entire movie has not even a single song in it!\u00a0 (And this, coming from a director whose last film (<span style=\"font-style:italic\">Devdas<\/span>) was the most expensive Indian film ever made, with a production cost of 500 million!!!)\u00a0 But, Black has a lot to offer in terms of international quality cinema : Award-worthy performances by almost the entire cast (75% of the movie is actually in <span style=\"font-style:italic\">English<\/span>!), cinematography and production quality <span style=\"font-style:italic\">par excellence<\/span>, and integrity.<\/p>\n<p>Above all, Sanjay Leela Bhansali has integrity.\u00a0 If the story requires glitz and glamour, it will have it.\u00a0 If the story cannot accomodate a song, it won\u2019t.\u00a0 Whatever the story needs is of utmost importance\u2026 No more, no less.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Black\u2019 is an exceptional film. Go see it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>India makes more movies each year than any other country in the world.  Yet, if I had to choose one movie from all the ones made in Bollywood, past or present, it would have to be Sanjay Leela Bhansali&#8217;s &#8216;Black&#8217;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1,20],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-personal","tag-etcetera"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4126,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions\/4126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}