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Subjects of sensitivity

Moviemakers try to make a difference to the lives of the physically and mentally challenged by creating awareness through their films

CINEMA'S SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY A scene from Sanjay Leela Bhansali's "Black"

For centuries, persons with mental and physical illnesses or disabilities were kept away from mainstream society, locked up and confined in poor conditions, and physically restrained with little or no say in the running of their lives.

It is heart-rending to take a look at the recent estimates that suggest over 50 per cent of the disabled end up with mental challenges due to poor health care and social stigma attached to it, and all too often, their lives go hand in hand with poverty, isolation and despair.

Disabled people have low self-esteem and think they cannot do anything. Sanjay Leela Bhansali proves them wrong in Black. They should be made to come forward and think they can become more powerful than normal people. Well indeed, his effort is a sign of our cinema's maturation and social responsibility.

Black has Rani Mukherji playing a hearing-impaired, mute-and-blind girl Michelle and Amitabh Bachchan, her tutor in the film. He acts as her caretaker and his unrelenting commitment to infuse self-esteem and conviction in her forms the premise of the film. His care eases a family's burden, and he acts as the eyes and ears for the family that can't be with its loved one all day long.

Michelle learns how to attune her intuitive antenna to a wide variety of possibilities. Bingo, the outcome is dramatic with tour de force performances.

Bhansali excels in setting a somber, poignant mood for the film that makes you understand what it feels like to be a Michelle and a Sahay. In this film, Michelle's strength does not come from physical incapability at all it. Rather, it comes from an indomitable will. Life becomes a constant

challenge, struggle for Michelle, her mother in particular, and even her tutor, Sahay who braves all odds and sticks long enough to take her on a journey of self-discovery before he falls prey to Alzheimer's thanks to old age and blinding.

The movie is a far cry from the way we see the traditional hero-heroine axis in our films. Movies like Black are a lesson on introspection, on the needs, concerns, helplessness, anxieties, aspirations and the rights of persons who are challenged not only mentally and physically but also by the discriminating society at large.

In Jahnu Barua's Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara, Anupam Kher suffers from rapid memory degeneration. Daughter Urmila Matondkar's trauma is palpable. Anupam devoted his energies to study the history of Alzheimer's patients before plunging into the part.

In Onir's My Brother Nikhil, Sanjay Suri became our first-ever hero to have HIV after many prominent leading men baulked at the idea of playing a gay HIV positive character. Earlier, Rajit Kapur played an HIV positive person in Ek Alag Mausam, while Shilpa Shetty and Salman Khan played the same in Revathy's Phir Milenge. In Nagesh Kukunoor's Iqbal, Shreyas Talpade is a young deaf-and-mute wannabe cricketer who becomes a national champ.

The lessons to be learnt from the visionary sense of these conscientious filmmakers are about the preciousness of feeling, fantasy, and love that we so often take for granted.

LASYA VEMPARALA

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