Note: This post is strictly for people who're familiar with Indian Cinema, and primarily Hindi Cinema... 

For those of you who've watched the 51st Filmfare Awards ceremony on Saturday (25th Feb), you may understand some part of what I will be saying here:

8 of the biggest awards namely: Critics award for Best Director, Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Popular Award for Best Director, Best Film, Best Actor and Best Actress all went to the same film: Black, by Mr. Sanjay Leela Bhansali. I'm not mentioning the other small awards that the film picked up - Best Editing, Background Music etc.

You'd think that that was an achievement like none other - imagine a critics panel and a whole lot of audience, all agreeing on the same thing. The film must be one of the best movies India has ever seen, right?

Wrong. My views are that the whole set of those people have all just agreed on one thing: mediocrity and the propensity to agree with "the common notion".

The common notion being: "Sanjay Leela Bhansali is a great director, Amitabh Bachchan is God, the story is a great one (inspired by Helen Keller, designed to touch hearts and win awards) and Rani Mukherjee is the current queen of the marquee. Nothing can go wrong with the movie".

So okay. The movie is something in a new direction compared to the run-of-the-mill movies that Hindi cinema (Bollywood is a word that I detest, so I'm not using it here) produces. When I watched the movie, I was impressed with only one thing: the kid Ayesha Kapur. She was wonderful, fresh and new. I loved her portrayal of angst, of being trapped in a world without light and sound. And I liked the brief duration where her interaction with Amitabh the teacher was shown. But that was it, period. The rest of the movie just seemed to me like a premeditated attempt at garnering all the awards this season. Parts of the story were just unnecessary, for eg. the role of the sister. Here we have an innocent, blind and deaf woman who gets all the attention in the family, and next to her we have a jealous sister who's upset with all the attention the deaf-blind is getting. Okay, I understand that. But why give her such an undeveloped role? There is no beginning, explanation or solution given to the jealousy - the only reason i could find for the track to be there in the movie was so that the heroine would get a chance at an outburst and some histrionics at a dinner table (which reminds me of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Khamoshi, where the dinner table was the primary location for outbursts). Also the sister's wedding gives the heroine a chance to ask her teacher to kiss her.

Amitabh's role transcends within the movie from the utterly stupid to magnificent to wacko. He has an introduction scene where he looks at a light-bulb and mouths some funny dialogues, an insipid love track between him and Mrs.Nair (was that Ms.Nair), some overtly dramatic and theatrical dialogues said to the kid's father - during those scenes, all I was wondering is what is the nature of the character that he's trying to portray? Eccentric is not crazy for heaven's sake. If the attempt was eccentricity, then God help Mr. Sanjay Leela Bhansali. From totally nuts, the man transcends to being lovable and nice for the rest of the movie till he loses his mind. Of course, those couple of scenes (where he realizes that he's beginning to forget) are the only ones truly justifying Amitabh Bachchan's craft. There's nothing much else to do in the last part of the movie with him in the thick of the Alzheimer's disease, since all he has to do is shake and walk around a bit searching for beds and walls. And of course try to say "water".

I do not want to say anything about the supposedly (quote: Mr. S L Bhansali) best actress in the country (was Mr. Bhansali purposely forgetting that this country has regional cinema and talent that he's probably not even seen?) and her role in the movie. Some of her actions were nice, but for the most part of the movie, I just felt that she was trying too hard. Her role didn't touch my core, and I thought Ayesha did a much better job. And there is just too much of emphasis of de-glamourized roles and sundry. What the hell. There are hundreds of actresses in this country who have done and are doing much better work, not just as heroines, but also in character roles, without all this hype.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali is a smart man, from what I've seen. He made one good movie (Khamoshi) with some flaws, but that was one movie which had its heart in the right place. It touched me, made me cry and to this day, I rate it as a great movie - some part of which had to be forgiven, but I'm ready to do that, just for the sheer brilliance some of the characters displayed. The movie bombed badly at the B-O. There was no publicity and too much of music, and the stars of the movie gave a thumbs down sign when the box office results came out. Mr. Bhansali was at that time a virtual nobody. Since afterwards, he came up with 3 big movies: Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Devdas, and Black, I assume that he spent some time thinking after his Khamoshi flop and came out with the success mantra, which is:

Don't ever be sincere to the subject completely and attempt to make a real movie - instead, lace the story with sincerity here and there, but add the commercial elements (like chips in a chocolate cookie) that are vital for your film to score at the B-O. Build hype about yourself - go to all the award ceremonies, put on a know-it-all face, put your mother's name in between yours, to emphasize how important she is to you so that a whole crowd of women just go: "he's so chweeet". Drag your mother to every awards function, and if you have to receive awards, take her with you on stage and tell everyone that you dedicate it to her. Make movies which are large in size, pretentious, and set in huge houses, which have ample spaces for heroines to run from one end to another (I think he has a special fetish for Aishwarya Rai running across huge hallways and on even bigger stairways). Have a color palette in your films and exhaust the viewer's eyes by filling up each screen with every possible color. Have a  couple of movies with lots of songs, a beautiful actress, a popular hero and another popular hero/heroine to make the triangle love story. Then go ahead and make a movie which has only background music, a black-gray-brown color palette, a heroine sans makeup, an ageing 60 year old hero who's the darling of the masses, and take a subject that is sure to pull the strings of every movie-goers heart. Be as secretive about this last effort so that critics/film magazines are clawing their way for sound-bytes. Release the movie, put up a martyr face and dedicate the movie to the deaf-blind. Say its a service to mankind. And walk away with all the awards, while people keep saying "waah waah. He's a brilliant craftsman", "Black is the most beautiful movie made in recent times" etc. etc.

I feel sorry for the Nagesh Kukunoors and Iqbals out there, the Hazaaron Khwahishen Aisi's, even the Sarkars, Paheli's and Parineeta's. The poor blokes really don't stand a chance do they? They are all up against a leviathan, built up of hype that blinds everyone's eyes to even mediocrity. I don't think there exist many people in the film industry who would stand up to this monster, and face it and say: "No, I don't think Black is such a wonderful movie as its portrayed to be". I mean, if they do, they would be swallowed in the disbelieving stares and the horror cries of the know-it-alls.  Mediocrity is in, baby. And talent is out.

Its times like these that I agree with Ayn Rand's objectivism theories, and want to go and read my copy of Fountainhead once more. I hate mediocrity. And I hate the public shunning of creativity too. And I wish that people like S L Bhansali stop being the media figure for such movements...