How many Hindi film awards will Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s ‘Black’ win this year? Probably many. But should it?

Let’s consider what the hacks have to say. Subhash K. Jha, who has made a career of offering paens to the powerful, has this assessment of the film’s achievement: “Stop right here. Hindi cinema has turned a corner. And it will never be the same again.”

Oh, really?

Has Bhansali successfully stripped melodrama away from films, especially his own films? Has he inoculated art against the kind of self-indulgence only the wealthy can afford?

Has Bhansali discovered an aesthetic that is superior and more subtle than that of a lavish advertiser selling his story as a glitzy product?

‘Black’ is the story of an old teacher giving a blind and deaf girl the gift of words. The story is very loosely based on the real-life account of Helen Keller. But because Bollywood is about inflating any story with the helium of implausible gas, the story is also turned into an account of the blind girl giving back to the teacher, when he is struck with Alzheimer’s, something akin to memory and language.

Bhansali might imagine he is paying a sincere tribute to the courage of the blind; by giving them the power to make miracles he has robbed them of the courage to lead ordinary lives.

The first lesson in civility that Debraj Sahai, played by Amitabh Bachchan, provides the blind girl is an early example of the film’s incoherent approach to blindness.

Bachchan shouts in that famous baritone of his—at a child who in addition to being blind is also deaf and mute. Who is the audience at that moment? Should we turn a deaf ear to such stupidity?

There is no denying the visual opulence in the film. However, the deep rich interiors illuminated by giant paintings cannot hide the barrenness of the film’s conception. When the word “B-L-A-C-K” is first introduced to little Michelle McNally, her teacher bends his fingers into the shape of the letters and loudly enunciates the sound. But why? The little girl cannot see or hear. Why is the girl’s own hard reality so preposterously hidden from the viewer? Why is her experience so completely falsified?

On 5 April, 1887, when Helen Keller was seven, she was led to a water pump by her teacher Anne Sullivan. Keller would later recall the life-changing event: “We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honey-suckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten, a thrill of returning thought, and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me.”

Within the next few hours, Helen Keller had learnt thirty words, including the name “Teacher.”

It is the simple, transformative power of this discovery, and the amazing intimation of what real education can be about, that is the strongest moment in Bhansali’s film. His tinny ear for truth and his obsession with rich wrappings is unable to quiet the small sound of a girl finding her own voice.

I still cherish that moment despite the smothering sentimentalism, despite also the hammy performances and plotting, and, above all, the awful, gigantic waste. I wish the applause to end. Sanjay Leela Bhansali has not found a new way to make films. He has only found new ways to spend money.