UDTA PUNJAB (A)
Director: Abhishek Chaubey
Cast: Shahid Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Alia Bhatt, Diljit Dosanjh, Satish Kaushik
Running time: 148 minutes
With Naani Nihalani chopped and muted by Judge Dharmadhikari, Udta Punjab is playing at the theatres just as director Abhishek Chaubey made it. Barring the micturition on the masses, which is exclusively swimming in the torrents with a “For Censor” watermark. The politicisation of Indian cinema is sure hitting new lows around a film where almost everyone is high.
Even if they had managed to beep out the names of all the towns and cities and taken out Punjab from the title, the film would have made you feel the same way about the state — sad and scared. Singhs are no Kings here. “The lands are dry and the kids are high!”
It’s “Green Revolution Part 2”, as trucks full of weed and cocaine and heroin and drug cocktails run up and down the state. With Mexico on their minds, the ministers run the show and the cops count their commission, and not just the rich kid in the Range Rover but even the small-town school kid can afford a prick.
For a movie on drugs, Udta Punjab has the four suitable pillars — a seasoned druggie, a new druggie, a seasoned fighter against drugs and a new fighter against drugs. But the template entwining the four characters and their strands (story and script by Chaubey and Sudip Sharma of NH10 fame) is novel even though it seems that at places the jumping from one track to another was an editing (Meghna Sen) decision.
There’s Tommy Singh (Shahid Kapoor), the popstar who took to the powder really young and spouted some inane lyrics about doing coke that caught the fancy of an entire generation. In one of the best scenes of the film, when Tommy is put in jail, two teenaged cellmates start singing one of his songs. One of them is there for killing his mother who wasn’t shelling out enough money for his drugs.
No wonder “The Gabru” now cannot write or sing, spending quality time (train)spotting his own reflection in the water of his potty, culminating in the Morrison-esque public exposure at a concert. The daft tattoos are still there on his body, but he’s also managed to carve out “Fuddu (Idiot)” across the right side of his head.
The new druggie is the girl from Bihar (Alia Bhatt) who works as a labourer on a farm near the Punjab-Pakistan border. Trying to sell the 3kg bag of heroin which fell from the sky one fateful night, she lands up right in the middle of the local drug mafia. There they inject her with one of their various cocktails and she soon starts dropping from the sky herself. But she can’t take her eyes off that billboard (from Barton Fink?) across the road advertising a holiday in Goa.
Dr Preet Sahni (Kareena Kapoor Khan) not only treats drug victims but also runs a rehab, helping the young to give up the addiction. She finds an unlikely partner in her war in assistant inspector Sartaj (Diljit Dosanjh), who initially was just another cop making money out of the drug chain but when his own brother overdoses, he wants to clean up the state, right from the roots.
Unveiling the different story strands while establishing the ground realities of problem Punjab, the first half of Udta Punjab is pacy and powerful. But the forced brewing of the doctor-police love story including an unintentionally funny scooter ride, where Sartaj has a syringe stuck at the back of his neck, hurts what was anyway a very predictable track in the second half.
What makes matters worse is the convenient joining of the other two tales. Tommy just bumps into the girl from Bihar and her one impassioned speech outlining her missing backstory makes him not only get his music back but suddenly saving this stranger becomes his ticket to redemption.
But chances are the bump won’t bother you. Why? Because that speech is Alia’s magic moment in the movie. Running around scared almost throughout and howling away whenever she gets a moment to breathe, Alia hardly has any line in the film barring that one monologue which has to justify everything her character has done till that point and everything she will do thereafter. And you watch and listen with as much awe as Tommy. It was in these t2 pages that we had hoped Alia wouldn’t restrict herself to the cool young urban chick ready to fall in love and Udta Punjab is her astonishing answer.
That getting back his music bit is Shahid’s magic moment. He is in the hospital room and the beaten up patient will only answer his query if he sings a couple of lines even as the cops are banging on the door. Out comes Ikk kudi jihda naam mohabbat... gum hai... gum hai... gum hai (the reprise version of the old Shiv Kumar Batalvi poem is actually sung by Diljit). The redemption is complete right there.
And it’s that much more effective because of the way Shahid has played Tommy. It’s one of those characters which can be interpreted in as many ways as there can be actors playing him. Kapoor, clearly in the purplest patch of his career, gives an eccentric, impulsive streak to the popstar who finally finds his voice when he stops singing. In the way he speaks, in the way he moves around, in just that bedazzled stare, Shahid achieves the impossible — making you believe that a Tommy exists.
One of the leading stars of Punjab, Diljit does a great job in his first Hindi film. He’s got an extremely endearing presence and the honesty of the performance really shines through. The weakest link is Kareena who is thoroughly inconsistent, flitting in and out of the character from scene to scene.
Amit Trivedi’s music is the other big winner. While Ikk kudi is solace for the soul, Ud-Daa Punjab and Chitta ve really get Tommy and the film going.
Despite all the extraneous tugging, Udta Punjab flies very high, spinning personal stories of redemption around the distressingly real drug-torn backdrop. Yes it’s dark, replete with expletives, largely in Punjabi (thankfully with English subtitles) but it never takes you for a fuddu. And that is a quality you cannot censor.
Udta Punjab flies/crashes because....
Tell t2@abp.in
