Very early on in Amar Singh Chamkila, we find out director Imtiaz Ali is really going for it. It’s in a stray line from Baaja – a song that juxtaposes the bloodlust Punjab was witnessing in the ‘80s with the state’s hidden, repressed sexual impulses like they’re sides of the same coin – that goes like “Kuch kapdon se zyada hi bahar tha, Chamkila” [Chamkila was too naked for this society]. Irshad Kamil’s lyrics level it as an accusation from Chamkila’s musical contemporaries, but also as something that probably fascinates Ali. Dubbed as Punjab’s own Elvis Presley, Chamkila had a brief, bright music career during Punjab’s most turbulent decade, after which he and his wife Amarjot were shot dead before a musical performance in Mehsampur in 1987. He was only 27.
Ali’s filmography has always been obsessed with mavericks, people who can’t simply keep their head down and go about their ‘normal’ course of life. They notice the society’s hypocrisies, and sense the gap between what they espouse in public forums, and how they act when no one is watching. Ali’s observations rarely cut as deep as some of his contemporaries’, but there’s still a wide-eyed innocence to them. Like a scene towards the end of a film, where a family member wanders into the home where the corpses of Chamkila and his wife Amarjot have been kept. They mourn for a few moments and then make their way to the bedroom with the locker, filled with the couple’s riches. It’s filmed with a matter-of-fact coldness, making the betrayal really sting.
Many scenes in Amar Singh Chamikla seem to have the quality of an anecdote. Most of them are straight-shooting, and the focus of distilling the legacy of the man on stage into broad categories. He was desperate, he was shrewd, he was deceptive [he married Amarjot despite being already married to someone else], and while making a living out of songs marked with double entendre, he was incredibly shy in person. It’s not a fully fleshed-out personality, but it’s hardly as reverential as most Bollywood biopics are.
Lead actors Diljit Dosanjh and Parineeti Chopra, playing Chamkila and Amarjot respectively, do a good job of selling the anxiety of newfound fame, and the confusion that comes along with it. When an artist like Chamkila – belonging to an oppressed part of society [he was a Dalit] – starts succeeding, jealousy comes along as a by-product. Mentors resent his rise, ‘civilised’ parts of society denounce his music for endorsing social transgressions, journalists take a stern tone with him for his apparent ‘low art’, fellow troupe members feel slighted for the most inane reasons. According to Ali, there’s no target softer than a celebrity. As a way to balance their successes, the society posits its failures and discontent by spreading venom about these celebrities who seemingly have it all.
Dosanjh is a fine, likeable presence – but I’m yet to find him inhabit and disappear into a part. In most of his roles, I’ve found Dosanjh playing versions of himself. In this film, Dosanjh brings the quiet desperation and ravenous hunger for success. “I don’t want to go back to where I came from,” Chamkila confides in his wife, a candid moment for any Indian celebrity who are often found to be overdoing their humility.
Comparatively, the film is less curious about Amarjot. The filmmaker doesn’t have many observations around her, and she remains a stoic presence through a large part of Chamkila’s story. Chopra, who plays Amarjot, has rarely been trusted with an author-backed part, so it feels like a missed opportunity on her part to not bring out the ‘female’ side of the Chamkila phenomenon. Unlike the song ‘Naram Kaalja’ – which feels like a Rahman/Kamil homage to what a Chamkila song would sound like if sung solely by Amarjot. It has shades of sexual assertion and female desire from ‘decent’ women of civilised society.
The film is the strongest when it’s using the phenomenon of Chamkila to meditate on fame, stardom and society at large. Even though most of Chamkila’s contemporaries also sing songs that are suggestive in nature, it’s only Chamkila who gets picked on by the conservative groups. An awkwardly performed scene with a journalist, who gets hysterical when the singer says he won’t talk about his personal life, drives home the film’s primary conflict about the unfair onus of ‘low art’ degrading society. Especially when this very art is a reflection of society. I wish Ali had probed this thought a bit more.
There’s a fabulous scene towards the end of the film, which brings out the schizophrenic lives led by most Indian celebrities. Going to a local police station to file an official complaint about the threats to his life from Khalistani militants, Chamkila walks in with the swagger of a star, only to bet met by a stern cop who gives him a dressing down for being ‘in touch’ with militants. After being unfairly treated by the cop, Chamkila walks out with a sullen face, only to be greeted by a swarm of photographers and people asking him for an autograph.
To his credit, Ali doesn’t claim his film to be a definitive document of the icon. What he does, with swiftness and initiative, is scrutinise a society that births, feeds off and then discards such a phenomenon.
