Monday, October 14, 2013

Black and White (released in 2008) - Starring Anil Kapoor, Anurag Sinha, Shefali Shah, and Aditi Sharma

This is a serious movie, on a serious topic. India has seen one spectacular suicide bomber, in the form of Dhanu who blew up in 1991, killing the former Congress Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and a number of others (including his security personnel) in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. But even though India has seen a huge number of terrorist attacks, with such terror attacks at many different regions of the country; there have been very few such suicide bombers in India (it has occurred in many other movies though, another one being the film Dil Se ). There have been many cases of terrorists attacking the police or acting in a conflict where they are not likely to survive (including the Mumbai attacks where the terrorists would have known that they would not come out alive), but no suicide bombers.
The movie starred a few known actors such as Anil Kapoor, Anurag Sinha, Shefali Shah, and Aditi Sharma. The movie was directed by Subhash Ghai, more know for romance movies, and other such movies (Taal, Karz, Pardes, and many others). However, over a period of time, Subhash Ghai also contributed to meaningful movies, such as the movie Iqbal. This is a movie of a disaffected man, whose passion have been bought to a boil and he has agreed to be a suicide bomber, and in turn takes on the identity of a man who has been brutally affected by the horrible communal riots in Gujarat. He has been recruited to strike at one of the most significant celebrations - the speech of the Prime Minister from the ramparts of the Red Fort on August 15th.




He (taking on the identity of Numair Qazi - played by the actor Anurag Sinha) comes to Chandni Chowk in the older section of Delhi (right next to the Red Fort, a crowded area where Hindus and Muslims live next to each other and take part in each other's celebrations). The idea being that he will make friends with a college professor Ranjan Mathur (played by Anil Kapoor) who lives in Chandni Chowk along with his wife Roma Mathur (played by Shefali Shah). He is the perfect example of a person living in harmony in Delhi - he is an Urdu professor at Zakir Hussain College, and lives with both Hindu and Muslim neighbors.
When in Chandni Chowk, Numair discovers a lot of things that are alien to him. Hindus and Muslims live among each other, they help out in the religious activities of each other (the Chandni Chowk area takes on an air of celebration during festivals of all religions - Hindu, Sikh and Muslim), and even those local politicians from either religion who supposedly play to religious fervor are actually friends of each other and are doing all this for political reasons. He was supposed to be tricking the professor by getting his help and managing to sneak in bombs and blow himself up. Does this experience of communal amity that he sees change his plan ? With the CBI and the police on the trail of terrorists, can he be caught before he can blow himself up ?
This movie was not a big hit commercially, but it is a serious movie for those who are interested in such a topic, and is decently well made with good acting. Well worth a watch.

Black and White (released in 2008) - Starring Anil Kapoor, Anurag Sinha, Shefali Shah, and Aditi Sharma

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