Chamkila movie review: Diljit Dosanjh brings a shining sincerity to this moving portrait of an artiste who was both reviled, revered

Who was Amar Singh Chamkila? Why are his songs, brimming with sexually explicit lines, and double-entendres, speaking of cosy ‘devars’ and ‘bhabhis’, and other taboo desires, so iconic? Why, indeed, is he an icon, heads and shoulders above the long line of Punjabi folk songsters who have had a murky relationship with a hypocritical society which both loved and hated their music, and whose very presence becomes a threat to gatekeepers of religion, and ruling dispensations? Why is he still heard, and why, even more crucially, is he still relevant?

Chamkila, dubbed the ‘Elvis of Punjab’, was a classic disruptor, an outlier who challenged the tight barriers of caste and class, which keeps people in their place for the rest of their lives. He rose above them to inhabit a space very few do: as a performer, entertainer, story-teller, a symbol of a fight against oppression, reviled and revered in turns.

Ali’s film uses several devices to re-create Chamkila’s story, flashbacks within flashbacks, several sutradhars, computer graphics, and an avowed license of dramatic liberty: the final result, at nearly 2.5 hours, is one of the better, full-bodied biographical sketches in Hindi cinema, which sweats the small stuff in order to paint the big picture, and which doesn’t shy away from showing us the subject’s not-so-appetising aspects.

His extraordinary journey, from a dirt-poor hovel where he lived with his drunken father and family to a performer whose popularity took him to sold-out shows in the Middle East and Canada, is played out in the film. His early friends turned foes, his meeting with Amarjot Kaur (Parineeti Chopra, lending able support) who becomes his partner on stage and in life, his group of supporters are all in here, as is his constant struggle to keep himself grounded despite his success, which clearly wasn’t difficult because he never really forgot who he was, and where he came from.

In several places, Chamkila’s plain speaking– ‘main yeh hi jaanta hoon, maine yeh hi dekha hai’ — as a response to his naysayers, who called his songs ‘lecherous’ and ‘dirty’, dubbing him a blot on society and religion, could have turned out specious. But in the way Dosanjh, who has clearly internalised Chamkila’s hard-scrabble life and pain, and distilled it into his fine-grained performance, puts it, it comes across as saying it like it is.

At every turn, even as he keeps climbing higher, from the Punjab ‘akhaadas’ to the Toronto stage, where ‘Amitabh Bachchan performed just before him’, to his cassettes and records selling ‘in black’, just like the Bachchan blockbuster tickets, he is confronted by the forces who were uncomfortable with a man who sang frankly about desire and lust, flinging all caution to the winds, when his audience demanded those songs.

ALSO READ | Amar Singh Chamkila — singing defiance in a militancy-hit Punjab

It was also a time when turbulence in Punjab which led to the prevalence of ‘khaadkoos’ (militant outfits) led up to the creation of Bhindranwale, and the launching of Operation Bluestar. In the film, we see Chamkila caught between threats from religious gatekeepers who demand that he stops with the singing of his ‘ashleel’ songs, and from militants who extort money.

All he was, was a lower-caste man who pulled himself up from abject poverty, ‘an ordinary man’ who understood the power of giving people-like-himself what they wanted. There was weakness in him: in the way he abandons a first wife and embraces Kaur, there is a clear evasion of the truth; in the way he leaves behind his loyal Tikki Paaji (Anjum Batra), there’s a hard-edged pragmatism.

In interviews, Ali has spoken of piecing together the Chamkila legend from many sources, a few primary, but many secondary. The effort shows in the details, but it also shows the difficulty of finding the sweet spot between grubby reality and retrospective myth-making. The narrative is marred by the English translations of the lyrics (that’s an OTT problem, of trying to make a story universal), which come on like italicised graphics. The flashbacks, from the real Chamkila and Amarjot to the fictional ones, while showing an amazing likeness also become too many; and the use of so many ‘sutradhars’ becomes heavy.

Chamkila stars Diljit Dosanjh and Parineeti Chopra in lead roles.

But to Ali’s credit, there isn’t an overt flattening, showing a pleasing confidence in the way he uses AR Rahman’s compositions to buoy the bawdy, salty lyrics. He doesn’t draw back from letting us listen to what Chamkila sang. And that is a clear win. It also helps that all the actors have performed their songs live. Through the music, and through Dosanjh’s lived-in act, we get a powerful, moving portrait of an artiste who lived and died by his beliefs.

Amar Singh Chamkila movie cast: Diljit Dosanjh, Parineeti Chopra, Anjum Batra, Nisha Bano, Rahul Mittra, Apinderdeep Singh, Kumud Mishra
Amar Singh Chamkila movie director: Imtiaz Ali
Amar Singh Chamkila movie rating: 3 stars