Sanjay Leela Bhansali's skills as a filmmaker have never been in doubt. Even then, Black takes you by surprise. That is the beauty of the film. It proves that, no matter how redoubtable Bhansali's reputation already is, the magic of his craft can never cease to amaze.

Black is a dazzling cinematic achievement. Both in terms of the scale of its technical virtuosity and of the enormity of its dramatic impact, Bhansali's meticulous labour of love is many freeways ahead of anything that the dream merchants of Bollywood are capable of churning out. Rarely has a Mumbai film achieved so much in two hours and a bit. This is just the sort of film that makes the box office redundant and upgrades the medium manifold.

Bhansali pushes his actors to the limits of their abilities and endurance, and both Amitabh and Rani respond with an amazing degree of expertise and flexibility. Rani is Michelle McNally, a deaf, mute and blind girl who is led into the penumbra of light and hope by an alcoholic, temperamental teacher of special children, Debraj Sahay, played with awesome dexterity and authority by Bachchan.

By giving Mumbai cinema its first deaf and blind screen character, Bhansali's film actually represents a return to the roots of cinema as a medium, where meanings and emotions were conveyed through facial expressions, body language and universal human situations, rather than through words, songs, dance and spectacle. Rani's character is consciously given Charlie Chaplin's gait - a point reinforced by the posters of films like The Kid and Gold Rush that are visible on the walls of the recreated Gaiety Theatre, Shimla as Michelle's ambles past.

The film's first 20 minutes are the closest a Mumbai film has ever come to pure cinema. As Bhansali sets the tone of the drama with broad brushstrokes, the shafts of light, muted shades, luminous textures and basic human emotions transport the viewer to a world he has rarely, if ever, seen on a visit to an urban movie hall.

Put it down in your lexicon. Bhansali's Black, henceforth, will be the colour of perfect purity.

- Saibal Chatterjee