If there's a planet far away, you will accelerate straight towards it due to gravity. If you place a Schwarzschild black hole right in the middle between you and the planet (the distance between the black hole and the planet remains constant), you will see a ring around the black hole from the light of the planet. That light takes a longer path to reach you than before.

a) Even though you will accelerate faster in that direction due to the added black hole's gravity, is the gravitational effect exclusively due to the planet now smaller than before because the shortest path for light is longer?

b) As you approach the event horizon, light coming from all direction including the other side of the black hole increasingly travels inwards, towards the black hole. As you get really close to the event horizon, does that mean the gravity of the planet is actually contributing to attracting you in the outwards direction, even if it's on the other side of the black hole from you?