By R. Paul Dhillon
I have finally seen a great Punjabi film after a long, long time and it is this week’s release Haani, directed by Amitoj Maan, who returns to great form with a film that is even better than his debut Hawaayian, which looked at Punjab during the militancy.
Haani is a love story for the ages and director-writer Maan is in full control of the tightly bound story which on the surface may look like a star-crossed love story but is in fact a richly woven fabric of Punjab, it’s culture, it’s traditions, it’s music, it’s rural history and vibrant people, all authentically portrayed with a writer’s flair for detail of all its richness.
Loosely inspired by his own legendary writer-lyricist father Babbu Singh Maan’s stories and songs as well as Jaswant Singh Kamal’s novel Puran Mashi, Amitoje Maan puts his own imprint on the story, primarily updating the love story’s traditional old world elements with touches of modernity which gives the film a sweeping generational past and present structure of dueling love stories.
While I don’t want to give away the main plot point but would only like to say that it uses magical realism in the form of a roving spirit to connect the past to the present while unveiling hidden secrets and a great tragedy, which threatens to repeat itself.
The film begins 50 year in the past with a mesmerizing story of burgeoning love affair between Ranjeet Singh (Harbhajan Mann), an old style village Jatt wedded to his land, a carefree spirit who lives by the ethos of friendship, loyalty and bravado, and Sukhaa (Mehreen Kaleka), a nearby village lass who is Ranjeet Singh’s match in every way and that’s the reason the two fall head over heels for each other.
Director Maan builds their love story in such a beautiful way, staging Punjab’s rich cultural past in the forms of Jaago, Gidha and other forms of folk Punjabi music and dance that the first 30 minutes are simply spell-binding as we see our star crossed lovers make a truly soulful connection.
Punjabi cinema’s idea of romance in the inferior love stories is to have the lovers sing and dance without any real human connection. And it is all credit to director Maan that we see so much humanity and sexual tension brewing between Ranjeet and Sukhaa that it is completely electrifying and emotionally powerful.
The story smoothly makes a jump forward 50 years to modern day when a young man named Herman, Ranjeet Singh’s grandson, from Canada comes to visit his father’s homeland of Punjab. Herman is the only one who can see a spirit of his grandfather. From there unfolds the rest of the story, jumping back and forth in flashbacks to sketch out how the past and present connect.
Haani is a comeback film for Harbhajan Mann, the film-music superstar who helped revive Punjabi cinema with filmmaker Manmohan Singh but recently fell on hard times with some poorly made and not well received films. But the Canada-based Mann simply shines in this film, reaching deep down to give his character the authentic touches of a rural Jatt who’s not afraid to pick up a stick to fight an opponent over a necklace for his woman and who can be hard as the land he plows and as warm as the glow of the moonlight. Mann’s gambled right with this film and has come out smelling like roses.
Another huge surprise in terms of performance is Mann’s fellow Canadian singer-film star Sarbjit Cheema, who plays Mann’s best friend in the film and has given a performance of a lifetime. At times. Cheema even towers over the hero Mann with an assured and complete performance that is a pleasure to watch. In fact, kudos to the entire cast as this is well acted film all around.
The credit for all this again goes to writer-director Amitoje Mann, who showed such great promise with his debut Hawaayian and then nearly vanished after the terrible Hindi language Sunny Deol starrer Kaafila on illegal immigration.
But he returns to great form here and shows that he has what it takes to make a great film. And Haani should be a lesson to the growing number of wanna-be Punjabi filmmakers, who are making lame ass comedies and generally terrible films, that it all begins and ends with a good script. No matter what genre you are working in – you have to get the script and story as tight as possible before you begin filming so you don’t lose the audience.
Haani is an excellent example of an entertaining film that doesn’t insult the audience’s intelligence while touching you deep down emotionally! It’s a winner!
