A simply beautiful story with a fabulous sound in the background
Amar Singh Chamkila Movies are referred to as dreamlands, but some films connect you with reality. One such film is the latest biographical movie by ace filmmaker, Imtiaz Ali. The Netflix Original has been released globally and it has quickly become popular online due to its exponential fan base on internet.
Amar Singh Chamkila stars Diljit Dosanjh in the titular role and narrates the story of legendary Punjabi singer and songwriter – Chamkila who is dubbed as the Elvis Presley of India. Chamkila’s music struck a chord with people because of his funny sexual words. This led to a rise in popularity for Chamkila which ended up resulting in both his assassination and that of his wife Amarjot Kaur.
In this movie, the opening scene highlights that Amarjot and Chamkila died backwards chronologic order. After Sidhu Moosewaala’s murder, however, death of Chamkila recently became a topic again.
Up until today we have seen him talk about how much he adored Chamkila’s music and watching Diljit play Chamkila is pure bliss. The movie is plain simple as it tells us an average person’s life turning into stardom. Lastly, fame got to him and he became greedy for more hence this led to jealousy from those around him which resulted into their deaths.
Parineeti Chopra does an amazing job at being submissive when acting as Chamkilars’ life partner. Furthermore Amarjot continues to be by her man even after discovering that he had a first wife; this thus demonstrates Indian women powerlessness during 80s because they were just used like objects without giving it a second thought.
The dialogue in this film also addresses not only objectification but also commoditization of women in Chakmilla’s songs. However, though no justification comes for Chandmilla’s mindset, his character does try to explain why he only wrote lyrics of this kind.
The irony that the people who bought and enjoyed Chamkila’s music were the same ones who used to criticize him for vulgarity in songs is clearly shown in the Netflix Original. He kept wondering why his listeners liked his songs and still received death threats from people asking him to discontinue such songs.
Although Diljit steals the show, the film boasts of an excellent soundtrack. We see Diljit and Parineeti along with other actors perform the songs sung by Chamkila and his band. For those who do not understand Punjabi, these thoughts can be transmitted through subtitles are written in Hindi as well as English (or any other regional language). These songs were composed by A.R Rahman with lyrics done by Irshad Kamil.
We last saw this combination of A. R Rahman, Irshad Kamil and Imtiaz Ali in Rockstar, which was released in 2011. These three are finally back together for Amar Singh Chamkila so Imtiaz Ali fans will be nostalgic. Listening to this single track makes it sound upbeat and the lyrics seem to question the life led by Chamkila.
This film does a great job of showing how caste is important in Indian society as well as how despite being successful, Chamkila still thought himself of as a “man” like anyone else. This gives credence to the fact that irrespective of his super stardom he was still humanly. The movie Amar Singh Chamkila is an excellent narrative that provides insight into the lives of singers like Chamkila and their demise.
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