Udta Punjab Is The Most Original & Jolting Film Since Rang De Basanti |

Who thinks of such a story to tell?! Only a  mind that is either supremely screwed-up  or stunningly sorted. In director Abhishek Choubey’s case, I’d go with the latter.

Udta Punjab is a work of  contemporary art  so audaciously unprecedented in its vision and execution of a subject that is topical and timeless , you wonder if Bollywood, as we love and hate it, is finally growing up. 

On the other hand lest we forget,filmmakers in the past  like Bimal Roy, Guru Dutt and Gulzar constantly prodded and pushed mainstream Hindi cinema into areas of darkness, not fearful  of the unlit interiors of the human heart.

Abhishek Choubey takes forward to an altogether new high ,  the politically empowered human drama of Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zameen(the migrant’s plight in the city ,as played out by Alia Bhatt’s character) and Gulzar Maachis(Punjab, bloodied battered and wounded, no more romanticized ).

I use the term ‘high’ quite deliberately. At least one of the…