Masand's Verdict: Black Friday

REAL CINEMA: Black Friday is the perfect example if you want to see what realism is really about.

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Direction: Anurag Kashyap

Cast: Kay Kay Menon, Pawan Malhotra, Akash Srivastava, Vijay Maurya

This week I watched Anurag Kashyap's Black Friday, a film about the 1993 serial bomb blasts in Mumbai and I've decided it's one of the best films I've watched in recent years.

The film is based on journalist Hussain Zaidi's heavily researched book by the same name, and what makes Black Friday so controversial - and the reason why it was such a battle to bring this film to screen - is because it takes names.

It's a brave film that documents exactly what happened, based on extensive research and interviews.

No names have been changed, no imaginary characters have been created.

The film centers around police commissioner Rakesh Maria's investigations on the blasts.

We learn that the blasts were executed by Tiger Memon on the instruction of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.

The remarkable thing about this film is that the director makes a concentrated effort to provide us several points of view including those of Rakesh Maria, Dawood Ibrahim, Tiger Memon and one of main bombers Baadshah Khan.

Now you need to understand, it's never easy doing justice to so many viewpoints, it's always tricky because you tend to suffocate the voice of some characters, while the others get a glowing presence.

But that's not the case in Black Friday. Anurag Kashyap manages to tell each character's story quite well and he even succeeds in capturing what's going on in their heads.

Just look at the way he translates the restlessness and subsequently the feeling of betrayal that bomber Baadshah Khan feels after he's planted the bombs and fled from Mumbai.

We tend to use the word 'realistic' very generously when we're talking about films. We describe Madhur Bhandarkar and Nagesh Kukunoor as realistic filmmakers, but truth is most of their films are exaggerated to a great degree to create drama.

Now of course that's not a bad thing, because it's the drama that grips you and engages you in most of their films.

But if you want to see what realism is really about, then Black Friday is the perfect example because Anurag Kashyap shoots the film in actual locations and he shoots it in such a natural, everyday manner that you feel like you're watching the news and not a feature.

It can't be easy recreating the Bombay of fourteen years ago, before the mobile phone revolution, before the satellite invasion, before the city was plastered with hoardings.

But Kashyap does it all so well. He takes these crane shots in a manner that you're looking down at the goings-on in these chawls and these bastis, he uses lighting so well, especially in those mono-chromatic interrogation scenes.