Highway is the kind of film where something is playing on the screen and something is playing on your mind. Its an amazing collaboration between cinematographer Anil Mehta and director Imtiaz Ali where the camera is the steering wheel and the scenery talks to you. Not many movies have come in the past where the scenes linger even though they may have been shot on the same locations.
Highway sticks to the road movie standard, 2 people of completely different backgrounds sharing automotive space. Alia Bhatt plays Veera a kid of a rich industrialist who has been reared like a good sheep for the baraati biryani. She hates the claustrophobic , tameezdar surroundings that is just a veil for secrets that we will know later like child abuse. Before her marriage day , she takes a drive with her very reluctant fiance to get some fresh air and the inevitable Delhi thing happens. A gang of jats lead by Mahabir Baathi (Randeep Hooda) are stealing from the petrol pump and they take Veera hostage to run away.
There is a bit of road in every Imtiaz movie - yeh hawaon mein hai kya ( jab we met), verdant slopes of Italy, Kashmir in Rockstar. There is always a rich gal is running away from her cocooned existence ( Rockstar, Socha na Tha ) . There are always characters who dont know fully what they want (Love Aaj Kal) . The system is usually the background if at all there is one. In this Imtiaz cleverly puts all the police chasing into frames that are purely for the record like a save stray dogs initiative.
What Imtiaz does in Highway however is that by focusing on the road and just 2 characters, he allows himself that extra freedom just like Veera. He gets the ability to get rustic, something that he has not done before , with a cast that looks exactly a bunch of hoodlums as you cross the Haryana border. The dialogues therefore get a raw edge. Just like Veera, Mahabir has a past , son of a doting mother with aspirations for a good educated life. He could never achieve anything more than petty crime. He blames the rich vs poor divide for that. You know that he is not bad especially when he says 2 people get killed when someone pulls a trigger, he didnt want this life of crime.
Its this wall that he has created for protecting himself that Veera slowly breaks down with her cherubic innonence. Veera finds in Mahabir a companion whom she can trust especially when her fiance didnt even move a muscle when she was captured. She explores her freedom in an umbrella that Mahabir provides although she should be running from him , but she is running away from the societal clutches. Mahabir becomes accommodating of Veera when she doesnt escape when give a chance and secondly she herself clarifies that she is not in love with him . In this accomodation , he forgets his surroundings for a while but knows that he can never get back a normal life.
Imtiaz conveys this with poetry of landscapes, the salt pans of Rajasthan, the gushing Sutlej in Himachal , some excellent situations (watch Veera dancing to an English rhythm and Mahabirs compatriot following her in a no holds barred performance, Veera's first escape , Mahabir breaking down when Veera offers him food and shows her domestic side), musical score and tense narrative (the seething rage in Mahabir) in the first half. The camerawork makes you follow the movie like a torch , looking for illumination rather than getting scorched.
Alia Bhatt revels in her character giving her first natural performance that is vulnerable yet carefree fitting the role of Veera. Randeep Hooda is masterful as Mahabir Bhaati , managing to convey depth yet carrying the mantle of the chief delivery of punches at the right time.
Imtiaz makes his own set of Imtiazisms - commercial over emphasis at times ( Veera's first escape, the child abuse), weak characterization of the support cast , sometimes you feel the lack of reality on why someone so self-preserving like Mahabir surrendered to his circumstances so fast, Veera behaving more like a 12 year old rather than 21 year old but the movie's rawness makes a lot of this believable. If the same setup was in more commercial surroundings ( Rockstar second half) , he would have lost grip.
Highway is one of Imtiaz's effort that shows his potential, but something tells me that this is still a journey and he is still finding his destination. For a fifth time movie maker, its a bit frustrating. He needs 1 more big innings to affirm a place to be known as a fine director . Apart from that Highway is still a lot of fresh air.
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