"Black" is not just beautiful. It has established an entirely new and unreachable standard of excellence in Indian cinema.

As Tamil superstar Madhavan puts it, "After 'Black' everything we're doing in Indian cinema seems so small in comparison. Look at what Sanjay Leela Bhansali has done. Everyone is saying 'Black' is of international calibre."

"(But I am saying that) 'Black' outdistances all standards of cinema the world over. Look at the emotional impact of the work, at the technical wizardry and craft of the film.

"Just that one shot at the beginning, when Rani Mujkherjee looks up at the sky and raises a hand in toast to life as snow falls on her...My god! That one shot itself puts Bhansali way, way beyond any other filmmaker.

"You go to 'Black' thinking it would be a dark film on being physically handicapped. You come away wanting to cheer cinema, life and Sanjay Leela Bhansali," Madhavan said.

He is not the only one who is dazzled by the stupendous performance in the film.

I was sitting with my favorite filmmaker in his home the day after "Black's" premiere, when actor and neighbor Aditya Pancholi walked in with a champagne bottle.

"Sir, I'm proud to live in the same building as you," an emotional Pancholi said.

I had first seen the film two months ago when it was still not ready. Even at that unfinished stage "Black" glistened like a diamond. But nothing I had imagined prepared me for what I saw at the premiere of "Black".

After the show ended, I saw grown up men weeping and little children sat frozen in their seats.

As a close friend from the film fraternity told me, "This was the un-phoniest premiere ever." The tears, the ecstasy, the hugs and wows the movie endeared all seemed to come straight from the heart.

The glamour dolls tried hard to keep their mascara from being cried away at the end of the film, and I saw superstar Salman Khan with girlfriend Katrina Kaif and her friends looking as though a missile had just hit him.

What is "Black" if not a magnificent missile meant to change the face of Indian cinema?

Everyone I knew from the industry barring Akshay Kumar and Kareena Kapoor were present at the premiere. Despite her absence, Kareena who was in Bangkok sent a congratulatory message to Bhansali.

Rani, who had simply ripped the screen apart with her power-packed performance, was waltzing in the air, literally dancing, as congratulatory messages kept pouring in on the evening of the film's release.

All Bollywood's leading ladies now have a genuine reason to feel threatened, with Rani's performance of a lifetime as the deaf-mute-blind girl in "Black".

Looking all slim and svelte (she has lost oodles of weight) Rani happily clutched at all the messages with the exuberance of a fresher.

"Give me more. I just can't have enough of the compliments," she grinned.

"I wish Sanjay (Bhansali) had given me this role when I was ready to get married and have babies."

She has a point. The performance is beyond anything she has ever done and probably will ever do. It was like Rani had come to her own with "Black".

"I wish I had taken one more day off. Just to enjoy the reactions to Black. This moment will never come back," reminisced the bubbly actress, who started shooting last Friday for "Paheli" a ghost film by Amol Palekar with Shah Rukh Khan.

Now that the critical weekend is over, and "Black" declared a commercial hit, Bhansali is relieved beyond words.

"Cannot imagine! The film with no songs, dances, no hero-heroine, about a deaf and mute girl's fight for space and dignity.

"When you make a film in which every frame is hundred percent true to your vision and conviction, there's fear that the audience and critics would perceive it to be self-indulgent," he said.

"'Black' has been lucky. It has made its point. It has got its audience. Now when I look at it, I wonder, 'Have I really done this!'"

Yes, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, you have.

The Indian audience isn't quite the moronic mass of formula-fixated fools that filmmakers have long presumed them to be. And it has taken a visionary to revise the big misconception.

At the moment, we don't know where "Black" will go in the long run. But the film has already proved a point.