Re: Black
oh i could watch this movie again....
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It cuda been a stupid story, but they made it sooooooooooooo welllll!
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just downloaded it yesterday, on your recommendation.. 
abhi tak dekhi nahin
Re: Black
that’s just pure injustice to this movie - and if the print is messed and you still watch it, you’re doing yourself a disfavor 
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Don't watch it on a bad print Gizzy since the camerawork uses all the darker hues and you won't be able to see any faces at all!
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amazing movie! a must see!
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i watched the movie and it was pretty dham good! the lil girl did an awesome job and as for the rest of the movie it was great, it felt like a hollywood movie, nothing really desi about it and man sanjay leela bhansali should really make more movies he does great.
Re: Black
^ yes he should make more movies like Black and Khamoshi and not like Devdas.
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^ i agree.. Khamoshi was quite the sensitive movie too but i thought Black was 10 times better. There were no boring bits at all..
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^ but didn't you find similarities :) The scene where Rani is giving her acceptance/graduation speech reminded me of the speech Salman gave while translating Nana Patekar's sign language in Khamoshi. I think it was when Manisha was getting married to Salman.
Re: Black
American Press reviews “Black”
Film Review: ‘Black’
Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:29 PM ET
By Kirk Honeycutt
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - “Black” represents a major departure – and major leap forward – for the Bollywood film industry. Hindi films made in Bombay (or Mumbai, as it is now called) invariably and without much imagination revolve around songs, dance numbers and love stories featuring stock characters. “Black” has none of that.
Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali (“Devdas”) and his fellow producers mean to reach an international audience whose interest in Indian cinema has been sparked by Oscar nominee “Lagaan” and such non-Bollywood films as “Bend It Like Beckham” and “Monsoon Wedding.”
The good news is that “Black,” which opened in India in mid-February, has become a hit film, demonstrating that Indian audiences themselves are looking for less formulaic and more intelligent local films. It screened recently at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles.
“Black” initially seems like a lift from “The Miracle Worker” in its story of a great teacher who is able to connect with and instruct a young deaf, blind and mute girl. One of the givens of Bollywood is its filmmakers’ transparent willingness to borrow liberally from Western hit films. But “Black” moves beyond slavish imitation of Arthur Penn’s film in so many ways that it most definitely stands as an original work.
For one thing, the teacher is not a nearly blind young woman but a much older man, full of bluster – and often full of alcohol, too – who is grimly determined to “break” this wild child so he can teach her first to behave and then to understand the concept of words and their meanings. The first act does more or less follow the plot arc of the 1962 film: The teacher struggles to gain the young girl’s confidence before her parents can ship her off to a mental institution. This culminates in her understanding of the word “water.”
Then the film forges ahead to the pupil’s years at a university willing to accept her, where her teacher sits by her side in classrooms year after year, signing to her the lecturers’ words. The film also focuses on the difficulties of the young woman’s sister, who resents all the attention received by her older sibling, and misplaced emotions arising from the fact that the woman’s teacher is of the opposite sex.
The biggest difference, though, comes in a framing device that lets the story be told in flashback from the point where the teacher is himself trapped in a world of blackness. Alzheimer’s disease has ravaged his brain. So now it is the pupil who must teach the teacher the meaning of the word “water.”
Just as “Rain Man” turned a handicap into a boxoffice wonder by casting stars Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman, so too “Black’s” popularity in India owes much to the casting of Amitabh Bachchan, Bollywood’s biggest star, as the teacher. Now in his 60s, Bachchan still commands the screen with authority, though Western audiences might find his acting a bit over the top. The entire movie, for that matter, relies heavily on melodramatic flourishes and a musical score intent on telling viewers what to think and feel at every moment.
The actresses who play the pupil – Ayesha Kapoor as the young girl and Rani Mukherjee as the older woman – are truly remarkable in conveyeing the anguish of a life spent in blackness and the grit and determination it takes to search for the light of education.
The girl’s family are well-to-do Anglo-Indians who are Christian and live in a lovely, Raj-influenced home in the northern Indian hill town of Simla. Cinematographer Ravi K. Chandran and art director Omung Kumar turn that house and later the university into things of beauty by using sunlight streaming through windows and pleasing color tones, at times creating a monochromatic look.
Cast: Debraj Sahai: Amitabh Bachchan; Michelle McNally: Rani Mukherjee; Young Michelle: Ayesha Kapoor; Sarah McNally: Nandana Sen; Katherine McNally: Shernaz Patel; Mrs. Nair: Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal; Paul McNally: Vijay Crishna.
Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali; Writer: Bhavani Iyer; Producers: Sanjay Leela Bhansaali, Anshuman Swami; Executive producers: Gautami Bhatt, Aman Gill; Director of photography: Ravi K. Chandran; Production designer: Omung Kumar; Music: MontySharma; Costumes: Sabyasachi Mukherji; Editor: Bela Segal.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
Black - Problem
Sanjay Leela Bhansali, the man who gave us Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Shahrukh Khan’s Devdas always, always goes for overkill. Fantastical sets right out of 1,001 Nights, flamboyant dresses, and even louder acting may bedazzle audiences (as attested by the the super success of his earlier films) but the storylines often defy logic and good sense and the melodrama overwhelms any underlying sensitivity. It’s all surface gloss without any real depth.
That’s a big part of the problem with Bhansali’s latest film, Black, as well. His film is based on the inspirational life-story of Helen Keller and how the deaf and blind girl learned to communicate and function in the world with the help of her teacher, the partially blind Anne Sullivan. Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan’s story was first turned into a live television drama, called The Miracle Worker, which was then turned into a smash-hit stage play and ultimately into a movie in 1962 that won Oscars for its two lead actresses, Anne Bancroft (playing Sullivan) and Patty Duke (palying Keller). The original story is emotionally powerful in its own right and really doesn’t need further embellishment. But in Black, Bhansali heaps on the pathos and turns it into bathos by having Amitabh Bachchan (playing the Anne Sullivan equivalent) suffering from Alzheimer’s and ultimately ending the movie on an illogical, unbelievable manner just so that the movie can have an “emotional” punch.
Again, while the movie may be beautifully shot, the overtly arty cinematography (by Ravi K. Chandran) actually detracts from the story, drawing attention to itself and away from the characters. By contrast, see how beautifully Irani director Majid Majidi shot his movie about a blind boy, The Colour Of Paradise (Rang-e-Khuda). There, too, Majidi framed many of his scenes like lush paintings but it was done unobtrusively and in a way that quietly enhanced the story.
Bhansali just doesn’t know when and where to stop and his love for opulence is another problem. Helen Keller came from a poor, rural background. But putting his characters in that kind of setting wouldn’t have allowed him to create fantastically detailed sets that are bathed in wealth and luxury. Thus Bhansali’s Keller, Michelle McNally’s (Rani Mukherjee) family is an exceptionally rich one and Bhansali goes haywire in recreating a lifestyle right out of the sets of Titanic.
Bhansali’s excesses don’t stop there. Take the scene where at her engagement dinner, Michelle’s sister (Nandana Sen) starts speaking of her compicated and difficult but ultimately loving relationship with Michelle. This is a well-written, sensitive moment. But rather than letting the scene speak for itself, Bhansali has all the characters start weeping at the end just so that we, the audience, are sure to get how emotional and sensitive the scene is ––– he probably doesn’t think we’re intelligent enough to get it otherwise. This is similar to how, in Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg had his titular protagonist breakdown onscreen, lamenting the fact that he could only save such few people from the Nazis. It was an incongruous moment in an otherwise excellent film that went against established character and demonstrated, more than anything else, Spielberg’s unabashed desire to win an Oscar.
However, on a more positive note, the acting in Black is quite excellent with Ayesha Kapur actually brilliant as the young Michelle. The movie’s brevity (just about two hours) is also a plus as is the lack of songs which keeps everything tight and compact. This is not a terrible movie or anything like that but Bhansali has to learn to moderate himself before he can make a really great movie.
Re: Black
I enjoyed the acting, cinematography and music of this movie but I can’t give it a thumb up. Just because this Indian movie was different and it has no songs it doesn’t mean that it was a ‘great’ movie like everyone is saying here. There was too much overacting from Amitabh. I don’t blame him for that. He is a great actor but in this movie he has overdone his performance. Especially in the beginning part he was just too loud and obnoxious. They kept repeating in the movie that Michelle is blind and deaf girl NOT a mental case so why that girl kept acting like a retard throughout the whole movie. How many blind people you see in your real life who walk like Charlie Chaplin? Why there were so many dialogues (more than half of them) in English? It seems like the director was confused and couldn’t make up his mind whether he wants this movie in Hindi or English. Why everyone had Christians names and everyone dressed like English people when the movie was shot in Shimla, India. The set was too English inspired and didn’t show any hint that people in the movie were Indians. In other words I have never seen so many “brown Angraiz” all at one place in my wholelife. Very unrealistic and artificial set and characters. Thumbs down for me. 
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I watched the movie after seeing all the recommendations here and found it to be a boring overly dramatic piece of crap. It seems like the director was trying to attract foreign viewers so that he can get nominated for a foreign language oscar. People who havent watched it yet, dont waste your time on this.
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Well WRX… you have to have read Helen Keller’s account or seen the original Miracle Worker to see where this movie is coming from, and to appreciate it.
Amitabh (representing Anne Mansfield Sullivan’s real-life character) wasn’t loud and obnoxious - but that’s how one gets when you consistently work with children with disabilities. I’ve seen this first-hand having worked at one of the NGOs which deals with them.
Secondly children with disabilities often exhibit what seems to be strange behavior (outwardly) expecially when they’re exposed to changing environments.
Lastly, the movie is half in English because the premise is an educated Christian family in India where the norm is to converse in English routinely.
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Yes, that's very true. Christian families in India are more westernised than desis, although some can differ. in the old days anyone with the slightest anglo indian blood refused to consider themselves as natives.
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i watched it so many times.. n i cried everytime..