In an industry that has long catered to the front benchers with mindless neighbor-bashings and tasteless action movies, its not often that you come across a movie that tries to take an intellectually elevated stand on things. Kudos to Mr. Ghai for the attempt. From no aspect of the movie(be it music, casting or story) does it seem like "The Showman’ has tried to make a money-spinning spectacle here. Not at all. And the near-empty theatres in the opening week itself are a testament to this fact. What he has done is given the select circle of cinema goers something to chew on.
Its not a movie for everybody, as I said. Especially not for those who’ve grown up on Sunny Deol fare in which the hall erupts at every wisecrack aimed against Pakistan. Its a movie for people who prefer to see beyond, as the title of the movie says, Black and White. Where is there a country on this planet where everybody loves the other amidst diversity? Its surely not India, but I say, not anywhere else either.
Shame on the people who add to the doubts that exist in the minds of the people and turn that into hatred. I mean, surely you will get a big box-office hit if you project Pakistan as the enemy, but what you really do is hit the communal harmony in the country. The front bencher is not intelligent. He’ll try to emulate Sunny Deol in real life at any given oppurtunity and his target? Yes, its the Indian Muslim. The cycle of communal tension begins from very small things indeed. This is not what cinema is for. Its a beautiful medium that can shape the thinking of thousands of young minds. Thats what movies like RDB attempt to do. Although this movie is nowhere near that league, but one can’t help but to appreciate that a film-maker cares.
Wont say much about the movie, watch it yourself, but the moral of the story is, "Dont believe everything you see in the news. The enemy is nobody. Nobody except a person who makes you hate a fellow human being."
Cheers to life.