Director Imtiaz Ali spoke about some of the key creative decisions that he made in the film Amar Singh Chamkila, including the fourth wall-breaking musical numbers, the split-screen montages, the on-screen translations of the Punjabi songs, and even the choice to keep cutting back to Chamkila and Amarjot’s dead bodies. In an interview, Imtiaz said that a few of these ideas came from composer AR Rahman.
Speaking to NDTV, Imtiaz said that it was Rahman who advised him to make a movie that could capture the celebratory spirit of Chamkila’s music. Even though he was shot dead at the age of 27, and even though this could have made for a tragic telling, Rahman insisted that the movie shouldn’t be ‘heavy’ or dark. Rahman also suggested that they take a musical theatre approach with the song sequences. Imtiaz said, “It was a compulsion to break the grammar.”
Also read – Amar Singh Chamkila: Imtiaz Ali set out to make a movie about the slain singer, but he made a movie about himself instead
Explaining further, he said, “For instance, how the roof breaks and the women fall wasn’t coming together. It is an event of great happiness for the success of an artist, but for the women who fell, it must’ve been painful, right? We didn’t want to show it realistically, because that visual would be terrible. Therefore, we had to go for animation… I never have smoking in my films, however, it was very important for this film to show Chamkila smoking. I had to show it. If I didn’t show it, it would be unfair. So, I used animation again. Because I don’t want anybody to take up smoking after watching any of my films.”
Similarly, Imtiaz couldn’t translate Chamkila’s original songs, but had to make sure that the Hindi-speaking audience understood what the furor was all about. “Therefore, we came up with the idea of the superimposed text on screen,” he said. Opening up about the way he devised the music sequences, he said, “It was Rahman’s idea to break the fourth wall in the songs, which was a big deal. He said, ‘Let’s have a musical theatre kind of approach’. I clutched onto that idea, because I knew that the audience coming to watch the film would no zero about Chamkila. It is the duty of the film to inform them. In the Baaja song, people are talking directly into the camera and giving different perspectives about who Chamkila was.”
Read more – Amar Singh Chamkila’s killers demanded the keys to his car; driver recalls witnessing the murder, not being able to sleep for 15 days
Imtiaz said that he got hooked onto this approach because it helped him build a myth around Chamkila. The movie also includes real-life photos and archive footage of Chamkila and Amarjot, and Imtiaz explained the thought process behind this decision. He said, “While shooting the movie, all of us – Diljit, Parineeti, me, the cinematographer – would be hit by the feeling that all of this really happened. I would wonder how I could translate this feeling to the audience, which is why we have the periodic emergence of photos and album covers. It was just to say that there was a Chamkila and Amarjot, and this happened. You’re constantly being reminded.”
Imtiaz added, “We’re also constantly cutting back to the ‘laash’ because even though we might be in a very happy zone in the film, where a boy has met a girl, in real life, they are both dead.” Amar Singh Chamkila was released on Netflix on April 12, to positive reviews.
Click for more updates and latest Bollywood news along with Entertainment updates. Also get latest news and top headlines from India and around the world at The Indian Express.
