Amar Singh Chamkila: Imtiaz Ali set out to make a movie about the slain singer, but he made a movie about himself instead

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Diljit Dosanjh in a still from Imtiaz Ali’s Amar Singh Chamkila.

For far too long — nearly his entire career, in fact — director Imtiaz Ali’s cinema has been described as being overly self-serious. Some of this overcommitted earnestness has rubbed off on his fans, who’ve formed a cult so strong that even he, their leader, can no longer control it. But for perhaps the first time in two decades, Ali appears to be having some fun on screen. Ironically, however, the subject matter of his latest film, Netflix’s Amar Singh Chamkila, might be the heaviest that he has ever dealt with. If any movie called for a serious telling, it’s this one. Militancy collides with artistic integrity, freedom of expression challenges religious intolerance as one man’s life story is given a biblical retelling.

In Amar Singh Chamkila, the famously introspective Ali seems to be discovering new truths about the singer as he goes along, and in the process, rediscovering himself. His most formally ambitious film, Amar Singh Chamkila reflects on the reverberating relevance of the Punjabi singer — a folk hero of sorts, who was gunned down alongside his wife Amarjot by unknown assailants at the age of 27, ostensibly for corrupting society with his raunchy songs. Was he a simpleton or a ‘social darinda’; a rebel without a cause or a ‘ganda sa banda’? Because the movie bears an outsider’s gaze — the drama doesn’t flow internally from the hero, but is embellished and embossed by a group of external observers — it invites various interpretations of Chamkila’s motivations before allowing Ali to arrive at his own conclusion. Chamkila wasn’t a rebel or a rabble-rouser, he says; he was simply a poet of the people. And this is when you realise that Imtiaz Ali has been making a movie about himself the whole time.

By stepping away from a lifetime of navel-gazing autobiographical stories, the filmmaker has ironically made perhaps his most personal film to date. In addition to sharing some of Chamkila’s general insecurities as an artist, Ali appears to be — and this is more likely — projecting his own anxieties onto Chamkila, a blank slate of a man if there ever was one. As well-documented as his musical performances were — some of them are spliced into the movie, alongside recreations featuring stars Diljit Dosanjh and Parineeti Chopra — stories about Chamkila the person have been told primarily through the oral tradition. And this leaves room for imagination.

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Parineeti Chopra as Amarjot Kaur, Diljit Dosanjh as Amar Singh Chamkila in Amar Singh Chamkila.

Even the most casual of Google searches will reveal a trove of interviews with the men who rubbed shoulders with him — sometimes literally, in the back seat of an Ambassador car — during the course of his short career. There’s a bitter former associate named Tikki, who threw a brick through the window of Chamkila’s office because he felt overlooked; there’s the old songwriter buddy named Swaran Sivia, who arranged a meeting between Chamkila and the men who were threatening his life; there’s a dholak player called Lal Chand, who narrowly escaped death himself the day Chamkila and Amarjot were shot. At least two of them play prominent roles in the movie.

It hardly matters if Amar Singh Chamkila is a factually accurate representation of the singer’s life — in all likelihood, it isn’t. It hardly even matters if Chamkila was a good man or bad. The only thing that matters is how Ali perceives him, and by extension, himself. This is why he feels confident enough to intersperse the drama with archival footage and stills, unconcerned about breaking the illusion of ‘reality’. It’s an approach that grabs your attention immediately, when Mohit Chauhan gazes directly into your eyes in the fabulous opening credits sequence — the film is bookended by fourth wall-breaking moments like this — and sings about Chamkila in the grand tradition musical theatre. In that moment, Amar Singh Chamkila appears to be possessed by the spirit of Hamilton itself. And like Lin-Manuel Miranda’s path-breaking Broadway show, the movie essentially plays out like one long eulogy.

Not all of the film’s theatrical touches are this bombastic, however. When Chamkila is confronted by his father for cutting his ‘kesh’, he holds up a wad of cash, which is illuminated by cinematographer Sylvester Fonseca as if by a ‘spotlight’. It shuts his father up. “Aur bhi paap kiye hain maine (I’ve committed many more sins),” Chamkila says, as he stuffs the wad of cash in his dad’s breast pocket, where it is illuminated once again. This is where Chamkila will be shot some years later. “Main bahut gandi jagah se aaya hoon, wapas nahi jaa sakta (I’ve come from a terrible place, I can’t go back),” he tells Amarjot in another scene, refusing to surrender the fame that he has worked so hard for, and thereby sealing his fate.

Later, when Amarjot is forbidden by her family from singing their trademark innuendo-laden numbers, Chamkila tells her that their records are being sold on the black market; that they’re earning more per-show than any artist in the history of Punjab. “Yeh apna time hai, lekin ek din khatam ho jayega. Phir araam se baith ke sochenge kya galat hai aur kya sahi (This time is ours, but it won’t last forever. We’ll worry about right and wrong later),” Ali gets Chamkila to say on his behalf, perhaps seeing in the singer’s resilience something that he can relate to, but also not ignoring the ambition that Chamkila was partially driven by.

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Parineeti Chopra as Amarjot Kaur, Diljit Dosanjh as Amar Singh Chamkila in Amar Singh Chamkila.

In Chamkila’s world, the mere act of singing — a metaphorical stand-in for art as a whole — is a sin. “Har kisi ki sahi-galat sochne ki aukaad nahi hoti (Not everyone can afford to think about right and wrong),” he tells a reporter in one scene, reminding her that his songs are intricately interlinked to his survival. He brings them to life, and in turn, his songs give life to him. If he stops creating and catering, producing and pandering, he will cease to exist. Constant validation has made Chamkila insecure. He is caged by his own success, and judged by the privileged few who remain disconnected from the ‘real’ world. Ali, through Chamkila, takes a defensive position. Everyone, he seems to be saying, wants a piece of him.

Via a judgmental police inspector, the movie highlights the disrespect that Chamkila was treated with by self-appointed arbiters of good taste. But who decides what is art and what isn’t? Ali, who has struggled with divisive critical reception his entire career, understands this feeling intimately. But his films have transcended basic barometers of quality; it no longer matters, for instance, if he thinks that Rockstar has flaws. The fans won’t have it. And after a point, Chamkila makes a similar realisation, that regardless of his personal ambitions as a musician — gun to his head, he was also capable of composing devotional music — he will always be enslaved to his audience. There’s dramatic irony in this discovery; he is, after all, a Dalit.

In many ways, Chamkila was set up to fail — by his fans, by society, and by life itself. After two hours of floating interesting theories about what motivated him to do what he did, Ali appears to realise that this is a pointless exercise, and resolves the matter in a manner that only a poet of the people, a fellow ‘ulti khopdi’ artist could. Recognising that he is a dead man walking, Chamkila declares that nobody can challenge destiny, and resolves to continue performing because that’s all he can do; it’s the only thing that he — a failed husband, a disappointing friend, and an absent father — has ever been good at. “Apne hi lahu se lagaya maine tikka,” he sings. And in that moment, Chamkila transcends himself, his fame, and the prophet-like persona that he has created for himself. He rises above being merely a singer; he becomes a saint, a symbol, a star whose power could not be contained by this world. And you recall the words with which this legend began: “Chamkila, chamka aise mein, cham-cham Chamkila.”

Post Credits Scene is a column in which we dissect new releases every week, with particular focus on context, craft, and characters. Because there’s always something to fixate about once the dust has settled.

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