Review: Diljit Dosanjh Is At His Very Best In Amar Singh Chamkila

Imtiaz Ali's Amar Singh Chamkila, a lively, deftly crafted ode to the power of song and performance as tools of rebellion, opens with a violent death. The bullets end a music career and birth an undying legend.

The film embraces a range of contradictions. And why not? Amar Singh Chamkila is about a man whose art was dichotomous: entertaining and provocative, immensely popular and unapologetically profane.

The film is mournful and festive, animated and pensive, consciously crafted and seemingly spontaneous. It is an elegy to and a celebration of a songster who revelled in lyrics that frequently objectified women but was always delivered in the form of a male-female duet.