Within the
first few minutes of Udta Punjab, it becomes quite clear as to why a section of
the political class wanted the film banned. And why their opponents wanted it
released. In the course of one headily written and performed song when the
titles appear, the drug menace of Punjab becomes crystal clear. And the rather
absurd attempts to censor/ban the film start making sense. But even without the
political angle – that surely peaked curiosity in the film – Udta Punjab is a
sometimes soaring, mostly gut-wrenching film.
Four
stories come together. A cop (Diljit Dosanjh) on the payrolls of the drug
mafia, for whom the menace hits home suddenly. A lady doctor (Kareena Kapoor
Khan) fighting a losing battle to treat and rehabilitate addicts. A Bihari
migrant labourer (Alia Bhatt) who gets sucked into the cesspool through a
coincidence. And a popstar (Shahid Kapur) who can’t compose or perform without
the highs.
Alia is
brilliant in her performance that has a fairly radical physical transformation
as well. Shahid plays the over-the-top buffoon with aplomb, replicating some of
the raw physical energy we saw in Haider. Diljit Dosanjh doesn’t have scope for
too much of a performance but his looks and poise indicate why he is a major
star in Punjab. Kareena has a somewhat angelic, moral-high-ground kind of role
and comes across as the only unreal character in the mix.
The character
actors – Diljit’s brother Balli, his ruthless boss, Satish Kaushik as Shahid’s
manager/uncle, Shahid’s cousin – are all superb, getting the accent, body
language and sensibilities down pat.
What works
for Udta Punjab is the complete absence of sugarcoating in showing the scary
lives of the protagonists. The brutality of the mafia is unnerving and the
jovial Sikhs we see in cliché-ridden Hindi cinema are suddenly doing alarmingly
cruel stuff. The yellow mustard fields give way to grungy rooms, crowded jail
cells and ruins where addicts are digging hypodermic syringes in their veins.
That, with the added impact of raw dialogues, just kills you.
One thing I
found very interesting was the angle of freedom of speech in the film where the
popstar is jailed specifically for hosting a drug-addled party and generally
for misleading the youth by glamourizing drugs. I wondered if this is against FoE
of a creative person, exactly what the film was accused of doing. Shahid’s Tommy
Singh wrote odes to acid trips and white powders, which the youth lapped up and
he was accused of promoting drug usage. He could, of course, claim that he was
merely warning the people against drugs. Even the CBFC and assorted political
netas justified their cuts by claiming that film promoted/glamourized drug
usage.
The other thing
is the misguided notion of the cultural police that filmstars and
music stars ‘mislead’ the gullible youth – showing them the path of substance
abuse, sexual crimes etc. In one scene, this myth is debunked where Tommy Singh’s
fans turn against him when he starts saying things he doesn’t want to hear.
Overall,
one of the better films of the year. Like an acid trip, Udta Punjab takes you
to unimaginable highs and plunges you to depressing lows – after which you end
up wanting more but are scared of it as well. There couldn’t have been a better
anti-drugs film than this one.
[Frivolous
Footnote: Hindi films on the drug menace have mostly shown a sanitized version
of it.
Sridevi in
Jaanbaaz was turned into an addict by the villains and finally killed by an
overdose, though her chubby frame and made up face betrayed none of the ravages
brought about by drug abuse. Priyanka Chopra in Fashion was supposed to be
dabbling in recreational drugs as was Kangana Ranaut but that track was never
the focus of the film. Anurag
Kashyap’s Raman Raghav 2.0 does a bloody good job of showing what casual and
sustained drug abuse means.]
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