Black Friday - The Past is Prologue

Black Friday is a gritty, and a hard-hitting film
filmed in documentary style revolving around the
investigation following the Bombay bomb blasts. Black
Friday deals with the aftermath of terrorism and
brilliantly conveys the message that in this war no
one wins, violence is futile no matter what your
intention is and the people are misguided by vested
interests to carry out the blasts. The neutrality in
the message is amply displayed whether Muslims are
shown suffering in the Bombay riot or the Hindus
suffering in the bomb blasts. There’s no preaching
harmony in a loud way but the director hammers in the
truth in a hard hitting way. The movie, while
apprising the viewers about the Bombay blasts, Babri
Masjid demolition and Bombay riots, travels full
circle to inform us how it happened and why, without
sensationalizing our exaggerating things. Some
liberties have been taken but then this is a
commercial movie and not a documentary. The brilliant
screenplay talks about Bombay bomb blast and its
investigation with non-linear format by opening the
film with the bomb blast and then going in for the
episodic format dealing with various issues concerning
the blasts – the plan, the investigation and so on. To
make matters a bit light some brilliant humorous
scenes are interpolated – the chasing sequence for
instance and the scene where the police arrest a
suspect in the toilet. The investigator is shown very
neutral through some scenes where he orders his team
to be ruthless but not to hurt religious feelings of
minorities, and the one where he breaks fast with the
Muslim suspects as a respect to their religion. Apart
from Kay Kay Menon, Pavan Malhotra, and Aditya
Srivastava, all the characters give a brilliant
performance doing justice to their brilliantly written
roles. Though I would like to have seen more of Kay
Kay Menon. aid kits

Some critics aver that Anurag Kashyap has failed to
handle the controversial issue of bomb blasts in Black
Friday in a cautious and politically correct manner.
This is entirely wrong as the movie itself is based on
the state version, which itself was politically
correct. Some critics have also wrongly accused Anurag
for justifying the bomb blasts. The director has
portrayed the events as they had happened without any
exaggeration. That there was no justification can well
be explained through couple of scenes in the movie. In
a scene where Kay Kay interrogates Badshah Khan, he
boasts that Allah was with them in their mission. Kay
Kay gives a fitting riposte that if Allah were with
them then they would have been roaming free and not
get caught. In another scene when Badshah Khan’s uncle
talks about 5000 hindus being killed in bomb blasts,
Badshah corrects him and says that only 300 hindus
died to which the uncle replies” But why 300 also?
Isn’t killing innocent people a crime?” Therefore,
where is the justification the critics are talking
about? Yes, the characters justified the bomb blasts
in the movie but not the director. By giving two
examples of a character being in awe of Dawood and
Tiger Memon mouthing a filmi dialogue of burning
Mumbai city, The critics say that the director has
sensationalized violence and glorified the villains.
They should know that in reality, in the past and even
today, gangsters are in awe of Dawood and that is what
was projected in the movie, which is based on “real
life events”. Some critics found the dialogues
provocative. Anurag has just tried to show how the
criminal minds might have worked when the bomb blast
plan was being drafted. And what was shown on screen
would not have been much different from the real life
scene. You can’t expect the director to show
terrorists to be gentle in their behaviour or speech
while planning gruesome acts. If the dialogues were
provocative then it would have elicited a strong
reaction from the audience, the majority community and
the leaders who were named in the movie. But that
nothing of that sort happened clearly proves that the
dialogues were not at all provocative but were instead
hard hitting. On the contrary, the critics should be
glad that the terrorists were portrayed as villains
and not as victims. Some critics say that the movie
failed to stress that the mission eventually failed
and that Mumbai did not react with hysteria or
paranoia or vindictiveness like the US or London after
terrorist attacks. That the movie shows all the
terrorists getting caught itself proves that their
mission failed. The critics should know that the
intention of the blasts (as shown in the movie) was
never to incite people to indulge in riots but to
terrorise people into submission. lyx zigarette

The only flaw in Black Friday was that it endorsed the
State version and that Anurag should have offered a
different take on the issue. But since the movie was
based on S. Hussain Zaidi’s book, the director might
not have resorted to a different point of view that
from the book version. So it is more of the writers
fault rathen than directors. Moreover, a different
take by Anurag would have made the film lie in the
cans for eternity as the government and
fundamentalists would not have allowed the release no
matter what. Only these two reasons could have been
the influencing factor in the director not going that
extra length to answer the unanswered questions, which
is quite disappointing. Also, it was dissappointing not to see the ”Sanjay Dutt” issue in the movie.

But still, Black Friday is one of the rare Indian
films that deserves standing ovation. This is a truly
fantastic movie depicting trauma, fear, anger,
lawlessness, hatred for a community. The people,
especially the youth, should see and learn from this
movie that how the terrorists play with emotions,
feelings and lives of all of us. At the end of day, it
is the misguided people who are the losers while the
main leaders walk away scot free. I strongly recommend
you to watch this movie to have a real taste of a good
and serious movie instead of watching those mushy
melodramatic sagas and the crap love stories which
have no meaning at all. This movie deserves an Oscar.
Anurag Kashyap, take a bow and bring on your next
movie asap.

AMJAD K. MARUF