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Seeing Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Black unlocks memory to bring forth cascading images of the art of darkness and the sound of silence in films down the decades. In the category of ‘disability films’, Black is the latest, along with a few others, such as Spain’s Oscar entry, The Sea Inside, to attract international attention. From Satyen Bose’s Dosti some 40 years ago and Terence Young’s Wait Until Dark with the inimitable Audrey Hepburn in 1967, many have made the Koshish to bring to the screen The Touch (Sparsh) that would sensitise us to Children of a Lesser God. Bhansali has excelled in the execution of a so-called disability film. So much so, that it is Bollywoodised mainstream despite its deliberately foreign milieu sustained by the typical Indian intensity of performances. Which makes one reflect, too, on the dilemma of defining a ‘disability film’: Is it about disability or a disabled character? Is it about the actor being disabled in real life, as, for example, Tom Cruise, who is afflicted by acute dyslexia, or Sudha Chandran, who lost a leg but dances with a Jaipur foot in Nache Mayuri? Does the film have to address itself explicitly to the disability or does portrayal of a disabled character, real or otherwise, in whatsoever role qualify to make the grade? Tricky questions. As in life, so in cinema, it is not easy to label and categorise, more so given disparate audience tastes. The trick would appear to be a film that clicks. For, otherwise there are thousands of documentaries and hundreds of run-of-the-mill features that may claim the tag.
And,
Black has clicked, in a big way. That may be criteria enough,
combined with the treatment of disability as a different but natural
human attribute to be recognised for its deficiency – nothing less,
nothing more. In a culture dominated by the able-bodied, images of the
successful and the heroic are always bold and beautiful. Cast against
this model is Rani Mukherjee as Michelle McNally, deaf-mute and blind.
Michelle is not shown as helpless, dependent and bereft of sexual
urges. On the contrary, except for what is projected as relative
deficiencies that can be overcome with appropriate education and
effort, she is endowed with most attributes of the able: beauty, an
attractive personality capable of charm, anger and stubbornness,
intellect, good health, wealth, an affluent and caring family, friends
and a measure of extra-curricular talent. It is free of hurtful and
demeaning sequences that offend the dignity and self-respect of the
disabled.
Ideally, a politically correct portrayal of disability should not evoke excessive sympathy or admiration. But this is Bollywood, and going to a movie for a good time often means having a good cry too. The film is good – by popular acclaim – unless one wants to make it an enemy of the best and pan it for its flaws. Critics and the box office too are sold on the film, and awards won’t be short or long in coming. Bhansali is no Francois Truffaut, though, doubtless, he has drawn some inspiration from the legendary French director’s 1970 film, Wild Child. That story of a physician’s effort to socialise a savage boy in the ways of the human, which is alien to him, is an all-time classic. It remains unrivalled as a cinematic treat on ‘raw’ animal life being turned social - educated, civilised and equipped to live. His Black, with its sweeteners, is more akin to Children of a Lesser God, adapted from Mark Medoff’s play, about a deaf woman working in a school for deaf children where she falls in love with a dedicated teacher. These films come to mind because Black’s ambience is more western than Indian. The dark, forbidding light and colours are suggestive of a cold twilight, ambivalent about whether it presages night or daybreak. These shades of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Blue – an altogether different story of a woman fighting to overcome a trauma – highlight the lonely separateness of Michelle’s world. In Bollywood tradition, Bhansali’s opus triggers recall of Gulzar’s Koshish, which remains forever etched in memory with the roles of Sanjeev Kumar and Jaya Bhaduri. The two film-makers share the honour of having made two other films, of the same title, on deaf-mutes: Khamoshi by Gulzar and Khamoshi the Musical by Bhansali. Those longer in the tooth point to Dosti as the first of such films. This tale of the friendship of a lame orphan Ramu and a blind singer Mohan was a hit in the 1960s. The saga of handicapped humanity swept the awards and its musical score is no less memorable. Sai Paranjpye’s first feature, Sparsh, set among the blind, blazed a new trail with stellar performances by Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi and Om Puri. There have been others too with blind characters, namely, Barsaat Ki Ek Raat, Kinara and Sunaina. Among this offbeat crop is Anjali, remembered for Revathy’s heart-wrenching role as the devoted mother of a child stricken with cerebral palsy; and Nache Mayuri, which is a true-grit story of a dancer determined to pursue her calling even after she lost one of her legs. Besides, from Khandaan in 1965 to Koi Mil Gaya in 2003 there has been quite a crop of films portraying characters with physical handicaps and mental impairments, not all of them worth writing home about. The point is not the number of films or the quality of particular ones that mark them out as significant. The larger issue is can Bollywood grow up to move away from its tradition where characters with deformities and disabilities are cast as either crooks or clowns to be laughed at or scorned; or, at another extreme, handicaps are exploited and exaggerated for their glamour and romantic appeal. It is par for the course to exploit a dwarf, show a man who stutters or stammers as the hero’s flunky, make the villain – be it a mother-in-law or a criminal - one-eyed, squint-eyed, hunchbacked, lame, wheel-chair bound or stricken in some way to emphasise that anyone with a twist to his/her physical features is also evil and perverted, if not mentally afflicted too. The message in the masala films is that these people –with whatever disability - are abnormal and unworthy of being absorbed in a society of the normal, meaning the flawless and the able-bodied. Bollywood films for all their commercial values only reflect that Indian society, and even the State, is yet unable to accept that the different – the differently abled and the differently bodied – are as normal as the ‘bold and the beautiful’ who are celebrated, promoted and upheld as models. The sad truth is that here the different are damned, and discriminated against, unlike in the West, which may explain why there is a huge body of western, including Hollywood films, where characters with disabilities – mental or physical – are no longer the exception. While films portraying disabled characters still stand out and often are assured of being nominated for awards, the blind, the lame, the deaf and those with physical deformities and mental disabilities are more common in their movies – and these are not necessarily ‘disability films’. The acceptance levels are so high that they are treated as normal too. Few of the millions who have seen Audrey Hepburn as the blind Suzie being stalked by the psychopath killer (Alan Arkin) for retrieving the drug-stuffed doll, unwittingly in her possession, would think of Wait Until Dark as a ‘disability film’. Yet, it is perhaps the earliest in that genre and extraordinary for the fact that one views it without any awareness of the label. More recently, we saw A Beautiful Mind, the story of the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash of ‘Game Theory’ fame and his mental disorder. The skilful and sensitive treatment heightens the dramatic effect for the simplicity with which a disability is accepted as normal. In Scent of a Woman, Al Pacino is a blind man who teaches a youth the ways of the world. He enlivens the role with a good sense of humour, rarely seen in portrayal of disabled characters. In the flood of such movies made in the West, there are crassly commercial ones too, but the crassness never extends to crude or exploitative characterisation of the disabled. The most memorable film, representative of this Hollywood stream, is Blind Rage, a chilling action movie that was also released in India in 1983. In this Fred Williamson adventure, directed by Efron Pinon, five blind criminals are out to loot 15 million dollars. It is an edge-of-the-seat thriller where many of the frames freeze with the cold terror that these master criminals strike when they go for the kill. The film does not outrage the dignity or equality of the blind. Their blindness is a matter-of-fact asset for the criminal enterprise, and that’s where the script takes off. The number of such western films is legion, and as a proportion of the total output, the percentage is impressive. They can be gripping, funny, musical, disturbing, challenging, whatever, but essentially they are humanistic in the acceptance of disability as normal. This side of the West too, there has been quite a few that are unforgettable and some of these invariably feature in the Cinema of the World section during the International Film Festivals of India. One of the most outstanding of such films with a universal appeal, with a resonance in both the East and West, is the Iranian film, Colour of Paradise by the accomplished director Majid Majidi. It is the story of a blind boy studying in a blind school craving to be accepted by his father, who resents his blindness and does toy with the idea of eliminating him. It is poignant yet provocative and touching for its humanity and beauty. When screened at IFFI some years ago, the film was a huge draw, much more than many of the fleshy-breathy flicks for which audiences flock to festivals. Iranian films, despite the restrictions under which they are made, are a class apart, radiant with ideas, beauty and humanity that gently challenge the viewer. Yet, even among the exceptional, Colour of Paradise, shines with a rare luminosity. The response to this film then, as to Black now, shows that audience acceptance of disability and disabled people is widening though it be at the level of entertainment and not engagement in real life. Any reflection on such films and their effect, to be meaningful, must be seen against prevalent realities outside the movie halls. Here, in the theatre of real life, the lived truth is vastly, and cruelly, different. Abstract estimates suggest that the disabled in India are around 100 million, based on the global reckoning of 10 per cent of the population. The actual size of the disabled population could be at least twice as much if not more, given that many disabilities – dyslexia, for example – is yet to be even recognised for diagnosis before being accepted as a condition requiring attention. There has been no scientific survey to establish the extent and variety of disabilities prevalent in the country, not to mention that India is expected to be home to the world’s largest number of people with HIV/AIDS and diabetes. Paradoxically, the traditional and the modern conspire in our culture to make an outcast of the disabled. In tradition, those handicapped in any way are generally viewed as being cursed, as well as a curse on those whom they are dependent; condemned by karma, as it were, and therefore unworthy of remedial treatment. They are shunned as if the contagion could be catching. Modernity, on the other hand, has unleashed aggressive pursuit of self-interest and the cult of the able-bodied. In a Darwinism where not even the fittest but only destiny’s favourites among the fittest can expect to survive with health, wealth, goodness and wisdom, the disabled are condemned without a chance. The prevalent fashion and passion for private wealth, as against public health, as a principle of governance endangers the survival of the disabled; it prevents the sustenance and creation of social and institutional spaces to identify, diagnose and deliver basic care for enabling them to actualise their citizenship. In such a climate, few of those who rush to see Black at the multiplexes have the courtesy to wait patiently while a blind man crosses the road. The film may create an
awareness of sorts and make individuals sensitive in their limited,
personal spheres, if at all. It is still a long way to social
consciousness, to an awakened community of the concerned and caring
who would intervene and strive to make state and society accept the
disabled as normal and equal. |
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A good film makes us see the difference
