Bechdel Testing: Highway + Free Pablo!

By Paromita Vohra

Only one female character (Alia Bhatt as Veera) is named, and she has minimal conversations with other women who are ‘girl’s mother’ ‘visiting friend’ etc. so the film fails the Bechdel Test. While talking to Randeep and other men on the truck she primarily discusses herself, so that’s not a bad thing, more or less. In general, conversations in the film happen stagily and don’t feel like exchanges.

The film has superb actors in smaller roles, inexplicable sections which simulate home video shooting for no revealed narrative and no discernible aesthetic gain. It isn’t all that bad as a story idea, but it seems to be made in the sincere belief that if the filmmaker becomes one with nature, it will somehow tell him the right thing to do. A filmmaker with some actual cinematic language and ability (which Ali has never demonstrated) might have managed to wing it. Perhaps if he had just applied himself to actually writing a script, this would not have been a bad film.

Meanwhile, here’s a poem for your entertainment.

TONIGHT I CAN WRITE
(with apologies to Pablo Neruda. Original poem here.)

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write for example, that I saw Highway and I shiver
for the memory is not yet in the distance

The critics revolve in the sky and sing
But.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I saw it. Seeing is so long and forgetting is also long.

To feel the immense boredom, more immense than the film
And the alleged script scatter like dung in the pasture

All that kept me was the vision of Randeep
The film was unbearable and now, he is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. (Sufi, of course.)
My soul is not satisfied that I have seen this.

My sight tries to find some sense, I think Alia is prettygood
My heart looks for the intention, but the film is not worth it

The same shot, the same shit, the same trees
We, who lost that time and money, are no longer the same.

I no longer love Imtiaz Ali, that’s certain, though I wanted to love him.
My voice tries to find him so I can scold him (stop feeling the love. Start writing the script)

Another. I could have seen another film. Because all that was before me
Was Randeep’s voice, his bright body. His infinite eyes

The film had lost the plot, that’s certain, or maybe it never had one.
Randeep Hooda is so hot, but the movie is so long.

To get through films like this one I’d have to hold Randeep in my arms (minimum)

My soul is not satisfied simply watching him in that directionless pap
Though this be the last pain Mr. Ali makes me suffer

and this the last film I see of his.

(Sorry ya, Pablo. But you had to have been there.)