Like Amar Singh Chamkila, Imtiaz Ali has made a career out of polarisation

Imtiaz Ali’s latest film is a biopic of Amar Singh Chamkila starring Diljit Dosanjh

With Amar Singh Chamkila, Imtiaz Ali comes home. It may not be his best work yet, but it’s a fine balance between personal and political, conscious and subconscious, objective and subjective. It’s also the first time he goes deep into the pind – to tell a real, rooted story devoid of urbanisation to make it accessible. He’s Harry (Shah Rukh Khan) from Jab Harry Met Sejal (2017), who has visions of Punjab’s lush greens calling him home.

Like Chamkila, Like Imtiaz

But what makes Chamkila a very personal story for Imtiaz is the parallel between the filmmaker and the late Punjabi singer. Both men, belonging to different eras and backgrounds, made their careers out of the act of polarisation. Both knew, consciously and subconsciously, what their audiences wanted, but were often penalised by the very same people who once put them on a pedestal.

Agreed that Imtiaz’s weapon of choice wasn’t songs laced with sexual innuendos (except probably Matargashti. No? Read between the lyrics). But he poked a bear within the masses that they had tamed all their lives – social conditioning. He made his viewer rise above what they’re made to do into pursuing what they’re meant to do. Like Tara in Tamasha (2015), he broaches the complex of the Ved deep-seated in all of us – and never apologises for it.

The outcome? For those who see the truth in his telling champion him as a chronicler of our inner battles. And for those who deny or simply don’t try enough to dig deeper, chastise him as a phony. But Imtiaz, like Chamkila, keeps hammering his ideas home – because as the singer puts it in the film, “Logon ka kaam hai bolna, wo bolenge. Humara kaam hai gaana, hum gaayenge” (Their job is to criticise, they’ll keep criticising. Our job is to sing, we’ll keep singing).

What’s also peculiarly common between the two is the battle lines drawn between those who can appreciate his art and those who can’t. In the film, Chamkila’s associates and even former rivals verbally clash against the police over the politics and morality of his songs. Similarly, there aren’t two cinema-loving friends who haven’t quarrelled over an Imtiaz Ali movie. Heck, his fans have even gone against the man himself – lambasting him for confessing that Rockstar (2011) is a flawed film.

While Imtiaz quietly and persistently keeps telling his stories, for a perceptive man like him to get influenced by the surround sound is natural. Years of not being able to satiate his non-believers did end up corrupting his subconscious. He took on the gargantuan task of directing Shah Rukh Khan in an Imtiaz Ali romance despite the contrasting schools of love they represent in order to make Jab Harry Met Sejal more accessible. Or when he got Sara Ali Khan, an actor who couldn’t grasp the depth of the emotions he was trying to project, in order to bring in the Gen-Z audience to Love Aaj Kal (2020).

On both occasions, Imtiaz let down those who believed in him. Not to say that these two films didn’t have the quintessential elements of his cinema, but his raw soul was in direct conflict with the refined packaging it was enveloped by. He went from the romantically reckless Geet (Kareena Kapoor) of Jab We Met (2007) first half to the pragmatically armoured Geet of the second half. At a time when he needed his believers to be like Aditya (Shahid Kapoor) and make him re-subscribe to his impulses, most of them gave up on him.

Another criticism that’s always stayed with him also came to the fore during his low phase. That all his leading ladies are mere manic pixie dream girls, whose primary purpose of existence is to make the male protagonists meet their destinies. But again, as Chamkila says when questioned by a woman reporter for getting taken aback by her pants, “Main aise gaane likhta hu kyunki maine wohi dekha hai. Par kabhi ladki ko pant pehne nahi dekha” (I write sexually suggestive songs because I’ve seen that life around me. But I’ve never seen a woman wear pants). Likewise, Imtiaz didn’t know any better – and Chamkila is no different in that regard – but the limitation can’t be blown out of proportion to eclipse his achievements.

What Imtiaz was seeking, was seeking him

It also helps that Amar Singh Chamkila is a biopic. Imtiaz said he thought he’d never make a biopic, until he came across the singer’s life and legacy. One can see why: Biopics are meant to have structure, boundaries, adherence to facts, some degree of rigidity – qualities that Imtiaz has always run away from in his movies. The biopic allowed him exactly what he was subconsciously seeking at this point in his career – a framework.

Keeping himself restricted to a setting, a world, a life as it happened, Imtiaz didn’t cross over to the proverbial field that he always does in his films. All his characters are chasing a reality of their own – which transcends the worldly reality – Geet imagining a life in the hills with Anshuman, Jordan meeting Heer in a field beyond all right and wrong, and Ved embarking on a Corsica escapade. Imtiaz was forced to stay within the pind – and stay with Chamkila and those who peopled his life.

In words of Highway (2014), he’s Veera to Chamkila’s Mahabir. He found his freedom in the latter’s bondage. Had he been left to his own devices, maybe he wouldn’t have stepped out of the cosy comforts of the inner world he’d built for himself. In Tamasha, a Sardar ki toli breaks into a dance to reflect Tara’s inner churning in the song Heer Toh Badi Sad Hai, but in Chamkila, the Punjabi women dancing to Chamkila’s tracks are real. They represent the tectonic shifts in Chamkila’s inner world, but they aren’t just a manifestation. They exist – or have existed – in flesh and blood. In that, Imtiaz’s conscious and subconscious meet for that rare occasion and become one.

Also, Imtiaz resolves another issue that’s said to have plagued his syntax. Characters of his films speak like they’ve already lived a version of their lives before – there’s a constant sense of deja vu, the tussle between the conscious and subconscious. But Imtiaz takes it for granted that his audience already knows that Chamkila was shot dead at 27. He begins his story with the assassination scene, instead of saving it for the end, as is the norm. He then narrates Chamkila’s story over his dead body (literally). We already know what awaits him. Since that’s out of the way, so we see his story the way the storyteller wants us to.

It’s thus safe to say that what Imtiaz was seeking was also seeking him. But even when he meets Chamkila in that transcendental field, he doesn’t surrender. He keeps his signature style intact, only turning to Chamkila for that nudge of reality check that he needs every once in a while. He doesn’t ask Chamkila to write the story – of himself or of Imtiaz. And when he doesn’t like the ending served to him, he changes it. As Ved in Tamasha puts it, “Ending kharab hai na? Toh koi baat nahi. Apni kahani hai, ending change kar lenge.”

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