Imtiaz Ali’s Amar Singh Chamkila transcends the template of a biopic. It records the life of a Sikh Chamar Dhani Ram, who was shot to fame as the Punjabi musician Amar Singh Chamkila in the early ‘80s and became the voice of the subaltern in Punjab. He became a victim of his fearlessness and was eventually slain along with his wife Amarjot on 8th March 1988. Unlike other Indian biopics where the protagonist is often portrayed through a whitewashed lens of respect and reverence, Imtiaz Ali chose to represent the good, bad, and not-so-pretty sides of Chamkila.
His star-crossed rise to fame earns him a lot of enemies. Chamkila, nicknamed the ‘Elvis of Punjab’’ wrote lyrics that were raw and packed with sexual innuendos. He wrote what he saw. Amar Singh Chamkila can be easily tagged as an observer who created music that would resonate with the grassroots.
Chamkila’s success earned him jealous colleagues from his fraternity. He started attracting negative criticism from people associated with the establishments and the anti-establishment. Amar Singh Chamkila is both a myth and a legend. Although he was shot in broad daylight his murderers were never apprehended by the police. He and his art are products of the violence that breathed in Punjab during the 1980s.
Imtiaz Ali’s representation of Chamkila’s life oscillates between a fictionalized version of the events and available real footage of Chamkila’s shows at the ‘akharas’. This technique of visual code switch offers an eclectic tone to the film. It is well-suited for a character as colorful and eccentric as Chamkila. It is a fantastic comeback for Imtiaz Ali. His best works Rockstar and Tamasha have seamlessly blended into each other to provide the discourse on the life of a Dalit man who turned into a ‘Rockstar’ and believed that he bore the onus of pulling Punjab out of the emotional turmoil.
A Well-Rounded Narrative:
The film begins with a song named ‘Bajaa’. It is a prologue to what the film is going to be about. The song is very similar to ‘Chali Kahani’ from Tamasha, a story about storytelling. Chamkila adopts the same narrative technique. It is a legend told in flashbacks about a legend. After Chamkila and Amarjot are shot dead, their bodies are kept at Chamkila’s bungalow for their kin to arrive their story is narrated by multiple narrators to a wide variety of audiences that include people from various strata of the society – the farmers, the laborers, the truck drivers.
One of the narrators is Tikka (Anjum Batra), a long-term associate of Chamkila who believes he made Chamkila. Another friend and well-wisher of the music sensation, Swarn Sivia (Apinderdeep Singh), an income tax officer, narrates the myth of Chamkila to an investigating officer (Anurag Arora).
Amar Singh’s story is being told at night more importantly in the juncture of day and night and moments after his death. Therefore all his shades of grey are washed out and he is portrayed as a hero in the narratives of his friends. For example, the fact that he was married when he took Amarjot as a second wife or indulged in smoking and drinking is seen as trivial or in a positive light. The flashback tries to dig into the reasons that led Chamkila to his demise.
It does not go into a journalistic or investigative mode rather it becomes an opinion piece that allows the liberties of filmmaking to Ali. The Punjabi lyrics of Chamkila’s songs appear in the middle of the screen in their Hindi translation, or the word Conspiracy or Plot just crops up on the screen when his contemporaries are trying to hatch a plan to pull him down. The crisp editing and the split scenes of Aarti Bajaj that juxtapose the reel version and the real-life footage of Chamkila and Amarjot performing on stage do not allow the audience to forget that Chamkila was a real person and not just a medium for their escapism.
It is a Complex Tale:
Amar Singh Chamkila is an important tale because it might narrate the story of the past but it speaks to the audience of the present. It is a tale of complexities. It pulls out a discourse trying to answer the age-old but pertinent question: who defines a culture — the well-educated, privileged 1% or the uneducated masses? Chamkila, a Dalit Sikh, through his art, attained such a status that he could imagine himself to be a soothsayer (who entertained his people during a time of turmoil). As Swarna Sivia narrates Chamkila (Diljit Dosanjh) had a problem. He never knew how to say no to his audience and perhaps this brought the end of him.
The album consists of six songs by A.R. Rahman. Each is a tribute to the legacy Chamkila created in his lifetime. Diljit Dosanjh is perfect as Chamkila. His boisterousness added to the innocence in his man-childishness makes Chamkila his best performance. Parineeti Chopra as the calm, shy, and submissive Amarjot pulls up her part adequately.
Amar Singh Chamkila is not just a story of an inconclusive murder mystery but a tale of a troubled Punjab overlooked by its law-making institutions that are unable to check the violence amongst its people who target the cultural architects time and time again.
Amar Singh Chamkila is now streaming on Netflix.
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