‘Chamkila’ movie review: Diljit Dosanjh gamely anchors Imtiaz Ali’s vibrant musical

Within the Eighties, singer Amar Singh Chamkila — born Dhani Ram in a Dalit Sikh household in Punjab — gained notoriety and fame for his tough musicality and teasing lyrics. His record-setting songs obsessed over incest and illicit love, however had been equally attuned to rural class disaffections within the toiling North. On March 8, 1988, whereas alighting from his automobile for a efficiency, he was gunned down by unidentified assailants in Mehsampur. His spouse and singing associate, Amarjot, was additionally killed, as had been two different members of his troupe. A number of theories had been floated, however with the state within the grip of a violent insurgency, the case went unsolved.

This haunting episode from Punjab’s checkered previous has been mined for cinematic fodder earlier than, most inventively in Kabir Singh Chowdhry’s absurdist docu-fiction Mehsampur (2018). Now Imtiaz Ali, co-writing together with his brother, Sajid, takes a crack at Chamkila. Audiences au fait with the naked info — and various gossip — of the singer’s life and demise received’t be persuaded anew. Ali’s movie doesn’t clear mysteries or exorcise any ghosts. It’s a reasonably easy studying of the Chamkila delusion, extra a vibrant celebration than a deep dive. But, even in its squareness, it manages to supply a peek into the artist’s interiority.

This occurs significantly late within the movie. Chamkila (Diljit Dosanjh) has offered out his Toronto present, throughout his abroad tour of ‘87. His oily impresario is grinning from ear to ear, telling him how, when Amitabh Bachchan carried out on the identical venue just a few nights in the past, they’d so as to add 137 additional seats. In Chamkila’s case, he proudly provides, that quantity has exceeded a thousand. We count on Chamkila to cheer up at this achievement; he’s been, all his life, a religious Bachchan fan. As an alternative, his smile fades just like the morning mist.

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No actual clarification is supplied for his blues: a narrator dryly notes that artists are unfamiliar beings, and that Chamkila’s dejection resembled one thing like a loss, as if his childhood had out of the blue ended. This second, buried deep within the noise and tumult of Chamkila’s extraordinary life, is the perfect in Ali’s movie, even when it’s wholly fictitious. Removed from supplying solutions in regards to the slain Punjabi singer, mythologised to breaking level in standard discourse, it asks a mild query: how snug was Chamkila, improbably baptized the ‘Elvis of Punjab’, together with his meteoric rise?

Ali opens his story with the fateful assassination, then proceeds to jumble up childhood and demise, deed and aftermath, truth and rumour. The lilting soundtrack begins to throb; photographs alter color and type; superimpositions seem. The wailing ‘Baaja’ reaches an indignant crescendo, full with spoken strains, like Broadway meets protest avenue theatre. It’s a carousel spin of a begin, paying homage to the grainy dream sequences in Tamasha (2015), or the swirling structural schemes editor Aarti Bajaj devised for Rockstar (2011).

This bracing prologue is adopted by a principally tame meeting of Chamkila’s life and instances. An bizarre mill employee, he sweet-talks himself into the orbit of folks sensation Jinda (based mostly on Punjabi singer Surinder Shinda), writing lyrics for him and bringing tea. An opportunity to open at a seething akhada publicizes his singing abilities. He builds his popularity crooning vigorous duets, however is quickly out of backers and a associate. His high-pitched supply and countless bookings put on out most, however someway Amarjot (Parineeti Chopra), tickled pink by his bawdy verses, stays on. They get married.

We all know that Amarjot hailed from an upper-caste Jat household; Chamkila’s ancestors, in the meantime, had been Chamar. Furthermore, he was already married as soon as, a truth he initially conceals from Amarjot (and Ali from us). There have been different forces at play. The extremists roaming the countryside in addition to non secular chieftains had imposed strict curbs on tradition and speech; the cops, cracking down brutally in response, weren’t any kinder. Chamkila was branded a baagi (renegade), a corrupting affect on household and youth. This made him weak to every kind of exactions and threats. There’s a darkly telling scene the place a bunch of thugs flip up at his doorstep, saying they love his music earlier than shaking him down for money.

Ali barrels by way of the darkish sociopolitical environment of 80s Punjab, as you’d count on from a filmmaker of his (principally romantic) persuasion. There’s a fixed softening of temper and tone, be it by way of the vivid 2-D animation sequences or A.R. Rahman’s pulsing unique soundtrack. ‘Ishq Mitaye’ is pained however wonderful, with its echoing chorus of ‘Essential hoon Panjab’, whereas ‘Naram Kaalja’ is a superbly drawn ladies’s people quantity, lyricist Irshad Kamil having enjoyable with the skittish imagery, riffing about “small sickles” and “snakes round thighs”. Regardless of Chamkila’s inflammatory reputation, this isn’t a very provocative movie, aware of cultural norms in its chosen time.

Diljit Dosanjh had performed a Chamkila surrogate within the Punjabi movie Jodi (2023). His vocal prowess turns out to be useful in Ali’s movie, which employs reside recordings of Chamkila’s unique songs. Right here, he portrays Chamkila as a mild dreamer, diffident and optimistic. It’s maybe too sweet-natured a efficiency; the charismatic loucheness, and the searing blaze we often glimpse in Chamkila’s eyes in previous images, are weirdly amiss. Chopra perseveres in a restricted half, and there are few feminine characters of be aware within the supporting solid: a model of Aditi Rao Hydari’s parasitic journalist from Rockstar turns up on this movie as nicely.

Samuel John, Anjum Batra and Anurag Arora are memorable in smaller roles. Finally, that is much less a movie about Chamkila than the lives that gathered round him or had been altered by him. As with all nice artists, he impressed each envy and awe. From rivals to raconteurs to earnings tax brokers, everybody had a Chamkila story to inform. Like moths, they flickered briefly in his gentle.

Amar Singh Chamkila is at present streaming on Netflix