Change Your Image
ajaaware
Reviews
Black (2005)
two major problems with the film: the violence done to the child, and the genders of the main characters
i have problems with this film: why does Michelle need to be beaten up for her to learn something? why does she have be thrown into water, something she's known to be afraid of? what kind of 'mentalite' is this, in which violence leads to education and understanding and ability to express oneself? also, just imagine a change in the gender of the two main characters. make Michelle into a boy, and make the teacher into an aging woman, and see if the same scenes would work out.
so while its good that such a film has been made, and has been received very well, the film itself needs some very serious examination.
i do not mean to trash the film, it's a big wallop of very intense emotion (and one can take it or leave it), most people were crying almost throughout the film, and so on. so obviously, it has succeeded. however, we do need to ask what that success itself means, surely?
i am stuck with the two questions: why beat up Michelle (why write a script that requires her to be beaten up), and why is the teacher a male?
also, while helen keller is acknowledged, the fact that she was a leftist, if not a Marxist does not seem to have registered anywhere. i agree that the film is not really a life of helen keller, but still, the question does arise.
Hamlet (1954)
a free adaptation of Shakespeare's play, interesting changes
There are several films on Hamlet, this is a b/w version.
What interested and impressed me was the attempt to keep to the original lines in translation--however, the lines given to characters are within what is recognizably a Parsi theatre tradition, dominant on the Bomaby theatre scene (a residue of this style is seen also in Yehudi, in which the actor Sohrab Modi delivers a Shylock style speech).
The lines often rhyme (and might have been the equivalent of rap!).
Also what is interesting is 'mad Ophelia' (played by Mala Sinha) sings a song which actually is a ghazal by Bahadurshah Zafar, the last Mughl Emperor of India.
Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are conspicuously absent, several scenes are transposed.
This Hamlet is much more ambitious, waiting and wanting to be King.
I strongly recommend this to anyone interested in versions of Hamlet, or how the play is dealt with in non-English cinema.
those interested could also look up the journal 'screen', for 2002 i think, i remember seeing an article on this hamlet.