Rockstar – A Movie that mocks the Image that did Injustice to It

Rockstar (2011, Imtiaz Ali) piqued me the minute I heard the soundtrack. An instrumental piece called “the Dichotomy of Fame” slotted in among songs that supposedly underline the “rock” aspect made me sit up and think – what the hell was Ali up to? Poor planning on my part meant I had to wait till the Sunday of the release weekend to see it, and in two days the movie was talked about and written about – voluminously. I cursed and thought this would ruin the movie-watching experience – a fear that, thankfully, did not deter me from going for it. I was in for a soul feast, but I did not have any inkling of this. But my burning question after watching the movie was this: why was it packaged in such a populist tone? Why did Ali – the writer as well as the director - not go the full distance call the movie “The Rockstar Psyche” or something to connote that? I guess this is one of those distinctly Bollywood issues, dealing with which would have lifted Ali well above the clique. Still, it was a packaging issue – the product was pure gold. Sometimes the best of books comes in the most indigestible of covers – hence the idiomatic warning, I suppose.  And the movie does make one attempt to redress this – the scene where Jordan (Ranbir Kapoor) tears up his contract in a mockery of the image-focused Dhingra (Piyush Mishra). (I went “waah!” at this – Ali had flat-batted a slap at the industry!)

Again, I was too tempted not to read the movie reviews and the average opinion seemed to be highlighting the flaws – a weak second half, not enough detailing of the “pain”, the movie was long. I believe that all these are flaws seen owing to the packaging of the movie as being about a Rockstar. I did not find it to be so – Abhishek Kapoor’s Rock On!! (2008) was closer to that suggested mould. Instead, the only comparable movie is the peerless Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities by M.F. Husain. To me, Rockstar was purely about the artist struggling to find his voice through the search for a muse, and having found both, mixing his emotional reactions to the two hopelessly and feeling a nameless frustration thereafter. While Khatana (Kumud Mishra) might have pointed Jordan in the right direction when he said all art comes from a sense of loss and longing, Khatana was himself at a loss as to how to deal with the chaos of Jordan’s morning-after. The two scenes in the second-half – one on the street after Khatana drags Jordan from the brothel, and their exchange later in the hospital when Jordan comes to check on Heer (Nargis Fakhri) underline this very poetically.

This was the “Dichotomy of Fame”, which Rahman renders to us through a “jugalbandi” between Jordan and Ustad Jameel Khan (Shammi Kapoor, in his final(?) fitting cameo), between the newly-established and the older paradigm. In the end, the “Nadaan Parinda” that was ripped from Jordan’s soul in the abrupt transformation from Janardhan to Jordan by Heer, his muse, was finally brought home by Heer herself when she, under cover of a blanket, in a scene Ali teases us by keeping for the very end, tells him this is his “field”, where, “beyond wrong-doing and right-doing”, beyond the flash of cameras and the whys and the wherefores of society, the artist and the muse can be united in peace. My soul wept with joy for Jordan, and I was glad that I did not wear my spectacles to the movie hall.

Ali also pays an immense tribute to the artistic community by debating their equation with society. In a world before television – presumably one in which Ustad Jameel Khan would have first found fame, there was a certain distance between the artist and the fawning fan following. The internet age has banished this space, and now public opinion has almost begun to dictate what can and cannot be created and labeled Art. Society, even as portrayed in Rockstar, tends to forget its debt to the individual who buys into the social contract voluntarily, even without truly wishing to. The price of the entertainment isn’t merely the cost of the ticket – there has to be a certain understanding that true artistry isn’t the product of rote education or other social factors. The question of why artists can’t be normal is an oxymoron, in my honest opinion.

The quote by Rumi that is the running theme of the movie applies to this. Artists plough a “field” that is beyond any socially-acceptable definition and they must therefore be accepted as such. Start giving them the treatment you’d give to your neighbor’s uncle’s third brother-in-law who works at such-and-such bank and you might as well stop following art altogether. The artist can only demand his “Haq” and sadly, invariably, encounter denial. While the rest of society faces hunger as a physical problem, to the artist this is much a spiritual question. Art feeds the soul, and also feeds off the soul, and when, on the morning after an acute burst of creativity, the artist finds an emotional vacuum within, he seeks succor of a kind that tears and rips at him, almost animal-like. Where along society’s acceptable avenues is such soul food to be found? Sometimes, the paths that lead to truly great art go through many a shady alley. Ustad Jameel Khan alone understood this in this movie, and felt a helpless sorrow. Again, the complex dynamic between artist, art and muse that M.F. Husain painted in such extravagant colors in Meenaxi, is given more everyday tones – but that inexpressible secret is –must be- jealously guarded, even though the payment is the lifelong social “taint” of an unsavory reputation. And besides, what adventurous voyageur ever thought of the consequences before embarking upon the journey?

Someday, Imtiaz Ali - Sir, I too hope to meet you in that field beyond wrong-doing and right-doing. There, I shall pay you my uttermost respects, if that is truly possible of me.