Many a rock-and-roll icon has snorted powder and swilled up acid when creating their most path-breaking work- think of The Beatles dripping acid for any one of their mid-60s seminal albums, or David Bowie being all soaked in cocaine whilst recording the iconic 'Station To Station'. Yet, while we, fervent fans, might have gladly drunk up their psychedelic visions, the artists themselves would never have really intended us to do the same crazed things.
Tommy Singh aka Gabru, a pop star from the muddy, murky land of five rivers, has no such pretensions. His songs are all about addiction and the crowds, to which he croons and raves, swallows it all- the half-crazed swagger, profanity and the relentless drug abuse- with reckless glee and devotion. And there goes an entire generation of youngsters, ready to inject acid into the withered veins of a nation that is soon falling apart.
Abhishek Chaubey's 'Udta Punjab' is the story of such a fall from grace of a land so long fabled in movies with its mustard fields and colorful charades of dance and celebration. The picture that it paints right away from the start is a hardly pretty one, but rather perceptive and probing- the focus expertly shuffling from the opening scene of a wild pop concert of ribaldry to the harsher scenes of teenagers snorting white lines and puffing grey smoke, even as the streets erupt with protest and dissent.
And that is just the beginning. This is not even wholly the tale of Tommy, even as it ends with his possible redemption. This is, plainly put, a 'Traffic'-style multiple-character drama that sets up a terrific backdrop of the rampant substance abuse in the said state and then lets its four narrative strands unravel, intersect and run parallel with ingenious, multi-layered beauty.
Chaubey, who had proved himself adept as in earthy flavor as much as in characterization and verbal fireworks, had made the rollicking 'Ishqiya' and the even better crafted 'Dedh Ishqiya' under the shadow of palpable influences- that of his erstwhile master Vishal Bhardwaj, as well as classic Western capers of the 60s. 'Udta Punjab' breaks the mould and is a beast of its own- a film which is far from being a caper about a drug delivery gone wrong.
Apart from Tommy, a half-crazed junkie musician trying to grapple with the harsh reality of crippling drug abuse around him, this is also about one-star cop Sartaj Singh trying his best, Frank Serpico-style, to escape the corruption in his unit after his younger brother overdoses after a shot of something particularly powerful.
He is aided in his single-minded quest by idealistic doctor-cum-activist Preet Sahni, a confident woman who makes him dedicated totally to curb the menace all around and investigate the tangle of conspiracy.
And somewhere, away from these narrative strands, is the stirring, poignant and often powerfully raw story of a nameless girl from Bihar falling into and rising from the muck of despair and degradation.
Chaubey takes these individual narratyives and ties them up together in a fascinatingly multi-dimensional plot (co-written by Sudip Sharma) that mashes the satirical brilliance of the Coens with the complexity of a powerful Stephen Gaghan narrative.
A lot of the talk about the film has been about the film's profane, outrageous humor and yet, it should be noted how serious 'Udta Punjab' actually is as a film. Sure, there is humor- pitch-black comedy at its blackest; there are sequences when comically absurd situations let it rip for well-earned guffaws- but most of these moments flit in conversationally, casually into a film that clearly has more in its raging, ambitious mind.
For one thing, here is a level of political and social satire that makes unforgettable digs at the reality. There are hard facts presented as intriguing clues in the central conspiracy being investigated. There are cruelly ingenious revelations that strike hard at social strife- at one scene, an imprisoned Tommy discovers that his hard-core fans have been handed the same fate for killing their parents in unblinking defiance. There is striking nuance- a seemingly normal household turns out, at one instance, an abode of hidden horrors. The film often makes our stomachs churn with the disgustingly grimy realities of the milieu but it also makes us, crucially, pay attention and even care for the fates and fortunes of the people involved.
This is a film that essentially sets out to make a strong case against the actual problem and in the way, it also makes for a particularly stunning drama of courage, bravado and despair against a seething world of evil. Above all considerations, 'Udta Punjab' is a profoundly moral film that knows what it wants to tell us.
Shahid Kapoor is phenomenally good as a loathsome, reckless Tommy Singh, bringing a ferocious wallop of freaked-out lunacy to a decadent pop star, who is, as a drugged-out character says, 'past his expiry date'. He rips through the frames in his own beastly way but it is when he pauses at the choicest moments- and particuarly in a terrific monologue with a mike- when he really rocks the show. This is Kapoor in peak form, doing devilish mischief the best way he can, without ever losing an irresistible sense of a faint heroism, worth rooting for.
As the crooked yet ultimately diligent Sartaj, Diljit Dosanjh is an absolute delight, underplaying his small-town cop part with grace and natural charisma. The way he scolds his younger brother about sitting at a cafe is as smashingly impactful as him complaining about the unchanging rates for the 'cut' from drug dealers and he even turns into the film's actual moral compass- morphing credibly from an underdog of his unit into a determined do-gooder. A scene involving him and Preeti, with him going accidentally high, is one of the finest in the film- lending a welcome streak of vulnerability to his character.
Special mention should go to two fascinating performances anchoring the main leads- veteran comedy favorite Satish Kaushik as Tommy's uncle-cum-manager, firing off bursts of abuses and demanding a 'lassi' even in a Goan beach, and Manav Vij as Sartaj's imposing, fearsome senior enforcer who demonstrates 'cop power' in ways both legitimate and evil. As Sahni, Kareena Kapoor Khan is a bit of a hit and miss- she delivers her somewhat preachy lines superbly enough but the role- essentially of a know-it-all, pitch-perfect woman in charge of turning around astray men- requires a steely confidence than the smile-happy essence that she brings.
It does not help to her character that much of the film is dominated by Alia Bhatt as the unnamed, myserious afore-mentioned Bihari migrant who lends the film its real heart. Much has been said about her accent, her physical commitment to the dire trials that her character goes through but all of it falls short. It would be suffice to say that this is her tale, the tale of a damsel in distress, of a girl trying to do things right, failing, suffering yet rising again valiantly from her seemingly endless misfortunes. It is unforgettable to see Bhatt at her finest here- plucky, world-weary, heart-broken yet fiercely determined to survival and Chaubey does her the favor of handing her some of the film's most beautifully sculpted moments, armed with Amit Trivedi's exquisuite music- her gazing wide-eyed at posters of American brands with thoughts of money in her mind, her silent yet angry submission to the terrors unleashed at her and her upsurge of rage against life's cruelties in that extraordinary monologue where she lets it rip. Take a bow, Ms. Bhatt.
'Udta Punjab' is far from an easy watch. It is not only a grim picture of a crushingly bleak reality- it is also one that tries to do more than what it can do, to tell of darker truths, to lead the film away from its faint optimism to despair that is hauntingly elegiac. Chaubey's style is no more George Roy Hill-snappy and rather Sam Peckinpah in all its darkness.
But it is nevertheless his own film, his own message, delivered with grittiness, pitch-perfect detailing (from a discus thrower delivering the goods from across the border to a billboard offering an unlikely dream of escape and hope) and excellent rapid fire dialogue. Bless the well-phrased subtitles too (getting high is referred to as 'Lucy In The Sky' at one point).
This might also be his most important film. The points it makes are a bit muddled but astute, and while the film's tone occasionally jars when shifting from one narrative to another, 'Udta Punjab' really flies when it is driven by both narrative purpose and quirk, by both brutal truth and sly irony- (its final reveal of a name might be one of its other razor-sharp digs).
Go watch it. Snort up this line of heady filmmaking and let it really blow your minds.
My Rating- 4 and a half stars out of 5.
Tommy Singh aka Gabru, a pop star from the muddy, murky land of five rivers, has no such pretensions. His songs are all about addiction and the crowds, to which he croons and raves, swallows it all- the half-crazed swagger, profanity and the relentless drug abuse- with reckless glee and devotion. And there goes an entire generation of youngsters, ready to inject acid into the withered veins of a nation that is soon falling apart.
Abhishek Chaubey's 'Udta Punjab' is the story of such a fall from grace of a land so long fabled in movies with its mustard fields and colorful charades of dance and celebration. The picture that it paints right away from the start is a hardly pretty one, but rather perceptive and probing- the focus expertly shuffling from the opening scene of a wild pop concert of ribaldry to the harsher scenes of teenagers snorting white lines and puffing grey smoke, even as the streets erupt with protest and dissent.
And that is just the beginning. This is not even wholly the tale of Tommy, even as it ends with his possible redemption. This is, plainly put, a 'Traffic'-style multiple-character drama that sets up a terrific backdrop of the rampant substance abuse in the said state and then lets its four narrative strands unravel, intersect and run parallel with ingenious, multi-layered beauty.
Chaubey, who had proved himself adept as in earthy flavor as much as in characterization and verbal fireworks, had made the rollicking 'Ishqiya' and the even better crafted 'Dedh Ishqiya' under the shadow of palpable influences- that of his erstwhile master Vishal Bhardwaj, as well as classic Western capers of the 60s. 'Udta Punjab' breaks the mould and is a beast of its own- a film which is far from being a caper about a drug delivery gone wrong.
Apart from Tommy, a half-crazed junkie musician trying to grapple with the harsh reality of crippling drug abuse around him, this is also about one-star cop Sartaj Singh trying his best, Frank Serpico-style, to escape the corruption in his unit after his younger brother overdoses after a shot of something particularly powerful.
He is aided in his single-minded quest by idealistic doctor-cum-activist Preet Sahni, a confident woman who makes him dedicated totally to curb the menace all around and investigate the tangle of conspiracy.
And somewhere, away from these narrative strands, is the stirring, poignant and often powerfully raw story of a nameless girl from Bihar falling into and rising from the muck of despair and degradation.
Chaubey takes these individual narratyives and ties them up together in a fascinatingly multi-dimensional plot (co-written by Sudip Sharma) that mashes the satirical brilliance of the Coens with the complexity of a powerful Stephen Gaghan narrative.
A lot of the talk about the film has been about the film's profane, outrageous humor and yet, it should be noted how serious 'Udta Punjab' actually is as a film. Sure, there is humor- pitch-black comedy at its blackest; there are sequences when comically absurd situations let it rip for well-earned guffaws- but most of these moments flit in conversationally, casually into a film that clearly has more in its raging, ambitious mind.
For one thing, here is a level of political and social satire that makes unforgettable digs at the reality. There are hard facts presented as intriguing clues in the central conspiracy being investigated. There are cruelly ingenious revelations that strike hard at social strife- at one scene, an imprisoned Tommy discovers that his hard-core fans have been handed the same fate for killing their parents in unblinking defiance. There is striking nuance- a seemingly normal household turns out, at one instance, an abode of hidden horrors. The film often makes our stomachs churn with the disgustingly grimy realities of the milieu but it also makes us, crucially, pay attention and even care for the fates and fortunes of the people involved.
This is a film that essentially sets out to make a strong case against the actual problem and in the way, it also makes for a particularly stunning drama of courage, bravado and despair against a seething world of evil. Above all considerations, 'Udta Punjab' is a profoundly moral film that knows what it wants to tell us.
Shahid Kapoor is phenomenally good as a loathsome, reckless Tommy Singh, bringing a ferocious wallop of freaked-out lunacy to a decadent pop star, who is, as a drugged-out character says, 'past his expiry date'. He rips through the frames in his own beastly way but it is when he pauses at the choicest moments- and particuarly in a terrific monologue with a mike- when he really rocks the show. This is Kapoor in peak form, doing devilish mischief the best way he can, without ever losing an irresistible sense of a faint heroism, worth rooting for.
As the crooked yet ultimately diligent Sartaj, Diljit Dosanjh is an absolute delight, underplaying his small-town cop part with grace and natural charisma. The way he scolds his younger brother about sitting at a cafe is as smashingly impactful as him complaining about the unchanging rates for the 'cut' from drug dealers and he even turns into the film's actual moral compass- morphing credibly from an underdog of his unit into a determined do-gooder. A scene involving him and Preeti, with him going accidentally high, is one of the finest in the film- lending a welcome streak of vulnerability to his character.
Special mention should go to two fascinating performances anchoring the main leads- veteran comedy favorite Satish Kaushik as Tommy's uncle-cum-manager, firing off bursts of abuses and demanding a 'lassi' even in a Goan beach, and Manav Vij as Sartaj's imposing, fearsome senior enforcer who demonstrates 'cop power' in ways both legitimate and evil. As Sahni, Kareena Kapoor Khan is a bit of a hit and miss- she delivers her somewhat preachy lines superbly enough but the role- essentially of a know-it-all, pitch-perfect woman in charge of turning around astray men- requires a steely confidence than the smile-happy essence that she brings.
It does not help to her character that much of the film is dominated by Alia Bhatt as the unnamed, myserious afore-mentioned Bihari migrant who lends the film its real heart. Much has been said about her accent, her physical commitment to the dire trials that her character goes through but all of it falls short. It would be suffice to say that this is her tale, the tale of a damsel in distress, of a girl trying to do things right, failing, suffering yet rising again valiantly from her seemingly endless misfortunes. It is unforgettable to see Bhatt at her finest here- plucky, world-weary, heart-broken yet fiercely determined to survival and Chaubey does her the favor of handing her some of the film's most beautifully sculpted moments, armed with Amit Trivedi's exquisuite music- her gazing wide-eyed at posters of American brands with thoughts of money in her mind, her silent yet angry submission to the terrors unleashed at her and her upsurge of rage against life's cruelties in that extraordinary monologue where she lets it rip. Take a bow, Ms. Bhatt.
'Udta Punjab' is far from an easy watch. It is not only a grim picture of a crushingly bleak reality- it is also one that tries to do more than what it can do, to tell of darker truths, to lead the film away from its faint optimism to despair that is hauntingly elegiac. Chaubey's style is no more George Roy Hill-snappy and rather Sam Peckinpah in all its darkness.
But it is nevertheless his own film, his own message, delivered with grittiness, pitch-perfect detailing (from a discus thrower delivering the goods from across the border to a billboard offering an unlikely dream of escape and hope) and excellent rapid fire dialogue. Bless the well-phrased subtitles too (getting high is referred to as 'Lucy In The Sky' at one point).
This might also be his most important film. The points it makes are a bit muddled but astute, and while the film's tone occasionally jars when shifting from one narrative to another, 'Udta Punjab' really flies when it is driven by both narrative purpose and quirk, by both brutal truth and sly irony- (its final reveal of a name might be one of its other razor-sharp digs).
Go watch it. Snort up this line of heady filmmaking and let it really blow your minds.
My Rating- 4 and a half stars out of 5.
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