Film: Black & White

Director: Subhash Ghai

Cast: Anil Kapoor, Anurag Sinha, Aditi Sharma, Shefali Shah, Habib Tanvir

Banner: Mukta Searchlight Films

Dialogue: Subhash Ghai, Akarsh Khurana, Sachin Bahumick

Cinematography: Somak Mukherjee

Art Director: Leena Chanda

Editor: Amitabh Shukla

Rating: 3/5

When a master craves to explore his creativity he generally turns inwards for inspiration. But Subhash Ghai’s search for immortality deals with a subject of universal importance. That is Black and White’s first triumph.

The film resides within the context of international terrorism and the Hindu-Muslim communal tension. Within this context it explores the world of Jehadi terrorists bred under the illusion of blood wiping away all sin and pain. It lays bare the mindset of a young fundamentalist willing to lay down his life for his false notion of religion and the forces of peace, love and truth that alone can overcome such fanaticism.

Black and White is an attempt to sensitize people to the range of the problem that is terrorism. It is not a treatise advocating peace through accounts of past massacres. It is a dedicated appeal to our minds and more importantly to our philosophies as a nation and people to look beyond the obvious melodrama that surrounds communal strife world-over.

Through the character of Rajan Mathur, a Hindu Urdu teacher, (Anil Kapoor) is built a world of a simple nation and humanity-loving individual whose belief in non-violence meets flaming irons of Hindu-hatred in the intense fidayeen Mahmood alias Numair. He constantly strives to keep the sensibility and integrity of India from disintegrating under the mindlessness of communal issues in his personal and professional arena. He shares this alacrity to be involved with his activist wife Romi, (Shefali Chhaya) who also forms the centre of emotion that affects Mahmood like no other.

But Black and White is no simplistic fairy tale of criminals meant to be redeemed by the power of love and truth. In fact the film is not about redemption, it is about...