Imtiaz Ali’s recently released directorial Amar Singh Chamkila is winning hearts globally. The movie which is streaming on Netflix starred Diljit Dosanjh and Parineeti Chopra in the lead. Recently, Imtiaz Ali opened up about the reason why he used the help of animation for certain central scenes in the movie.
The ace director further spoke about how Amar Singh Chamkila’s music director AR Rahman suggested that the movie should use the fourth-wall-breaking technique and must not be dark even though the singer died at a young age.
Imtiaz Ali talks about the suggestions given by AR Rahman
Rahman wished that the movie should be more celebratory of Chamkila’s life rather than being heavy on heart. It was Rahman only who advised Imtiaz that he should opt for a musical theatre approach while dealing with songs in the movie. Imtiaz confessed, “It was a compulsion to break the grammar.”
Imtiaz revealed that it was Rahman’s idea to break the fourth wall in the songs, ‘which was a big deal’. The Oscar-winning composer said, ‘Let’s have a musical theatre kind of approach’. Imtiaz went on to clutch onto that idea and the reason was strangely Ali’s assumption that the audience who’ll be watching the movie will have zero knowledge about Chamkila.
The Tamasha director added, “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.” Imtiaz further confessed that this was the only approach that helped him create a myth around Chamkila.
Why did Imtiaz Ali use animation in his movies?
According to the filmmaker, the idea behind this move was to mellow down dramatic scenes. He detailed, “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.”
Imtiaz Ali further shared how he never shows smoking scenes in his films but for Amar Singh Chamkila, it was a necessary display. He added, “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.”
Talking about another technique he used in this movie, Imtiaz revealed he wanted everyone to understand the meaning of Chamkila’s songs but not by translating them into Hindi. “Therefore, we came up with the idea of the superimposed text on screen,” Imtiaz shared in the same interview.
Amar Singh Chamkila also had several scenes where the real photos and videos of the movie’s central characters were shown on-screen. Explaining the thought process behind the same, Imtiaz shared, “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.”
Amar Singh Chamkila was released on April 12 and currently enjoys an IMDb rating of 8 out of 10.
