Highway 2014 website bollywood movie
After that, songs such as " mae yaar da diwana" and "patakha guddi" played an important role in boosting the duo's popularity. Their song " Allah Hoo" was a YouTube hit. In 2013, they performed at Baba Murad Shah Dargah in Nakodar for the first time, and they became very popular from that night. Iqbal Mahal, a Canadian music promoter, discovered the sisters in 2010, and played a big role in their success. They didn't miss a beat and sang professionally with tabla and harmonium. Mir asked them if they can sing it with instruments. When Sultana Nooran was seven and Jyoti Nooran was five, Mir discovered their talent while they were playing at home and singing a Bulleh Shah kalam they had heard from their grandmother, 'kulli vichon ni yaar lab lai'. According to Mir, the family was on hard times and Mir gave music lessons to support them. The sisters were trained from early childhood by their father, Ustad Gulshan Mir, grandson of Bibi Nooran and son of Swarn Nooran, a Sufi singer of the 1970s. They perform Sham Chaurasia gharana classical music. A beautiful mess, but a mess nonetheless.The Nooran Sisters – Jyoti Nooran and Sultana Nooran – are a Sufi singing duo from Jalandhar, India. I’m going with two out of five for Highway. It’s meandering and indulgent in many parts, tiring you out well before it’s over. The film – a brave experiment on Ali’s part, who uses long stretches of silence, improv dialogues, and characters over plot to drive the narrative – doesn’t necessarily work. There’s a simmering intensity to his performance that nicely balances out Alia’s fragility. Hooda, meanwhile, fills out the part of the brooding thug as if he were born to play it. Bhatt, in only her second film role, is refreshingly natural as she skillfully nails the vulnerability and the tenacity of her character. Blame it on the undercooked script, or the fact that Ali stretches the film’s overarching theme (finding one’s freedom in captivity) so thin that it’s reduced to an empty cliché.īut even when the material fails him, his leading lady seldom does.
A few moments of humor aside, Highway becomes a slog. Ironically, even as the journey continues, there’s virtually no plot movement to keep you engaged. It’s here, in the film’s inert second half, that it all comes undone. But a scene in which Mahabir flashbacks to a happy place in his memory is giggle-inducing. As it turns out, both Veera and Mahabir are haunted by deep dark secrets from their childhood, and unburdening their hearts proves cathartic. Equally clunky is the catalyst that draws this unlikely pair closer. Swept away by emotion, seduced by these sights and sounds, and relieved to be out of her claustrophobic home in the city, Veera’s quick transformation from helpless victim to enthusiastic co-traveler is nevertheless unconvincing. The film’s dreamy visuals are perfectly complemented by AR Rahman’s terrific tracks, and a minimal background score that’s never intrusive. We get the bustle of roadside dhaabas and markets, the raspy-voiced tunes of folk singers dotting the open roads, and the sight of clouds wafting in the skies above one’s head. Shot remarkably by Anil Mehta, whose camera captures not only the astonishing beauty of India’s landscapes, but also knows exactly when to stay on a moment – like that bit in which Veera, perched on a rock by a gushing stream, breaks into unbridled, involuntary laughter then into tears just as unexpectedly – the film looks and feels sharply textured and authentic. The gang’s leader, Mahabir, in an attempt to escape the clutches of the law, takes off with her on a seemingly never-ending trek across North India…from Delhi to Haryana, to the deserts of Rajasthan, then to Punjab and all the way up to the mountains in Himachal Pradesh and Kashmir. Days before her wedding, while on a late night drive with her fiance, Veera witnesses a shootout at a gas station, and within minutes she’s abducted by a gang of thugs.
Taking a clean break from the glossy romantic comedies he’s had great success with, Ali expands the road-trip motif that has run through most of his films into a full-fledged premise in Highway.
#Highway 2014 website bollywood movie movie#
It’s a classic case of Stockholm syndrome, but the message of the movie is especially disturbing in a society grappling with women’s safety. She’s also developed feelings for Mahabir. Veera, after all, is unusually cheerful for a rich brat who has been whisked off at gunpoint, slapped around by louts, and transported far away from her home. Like us in the audience, her kidnapper Mahabir (Randeep Hooda) is dumbstruck. At one point in writer-director Imtiaz Ali’s Highway, Alia Bhatt’s character Veera, who has been kidnapped and taken hostage in the back of a truck, pops in an English music CD and begins gyrating to a tune in the middle of an empty road.