When we look at Imitiaz's stories, they are not typical love stories but sure have another dimension to it. Along with a tale of love, every story by Imitiaz adheres to a particular human emotion. It talks more about an individual. Tamasha takes a concrete look at Ved's passion and situation where childhood dreams are crushed amid pressure by society. Wherein we witness Jordan's heart-break leading to achieve his goal, hunger for success and self-destruction in Rockstar. Imitiaz manages to knit these human emotions, trauma and authentic realistic problems with the love elegantly.
Similarly, Highway is a tale about love and freedom. Again Imitiaz's style of letting you feel and relate yourself to the story at some point is what Highway is. We tend to live with wounds. Some are wrapped and carved beneath down there for many years. These wounds need to be bled. These need to be clean. These need to be healed at some point of life. The justice is to let them be free. And Highway exactly does the job of offering the freedom.
Though we can see Imitiaz's work focuses on individuality, rigorously speaking, it is not about one in the crowd, but it is more about the one. It is about the crowd's say on him/her and collateral effects that happen because of it. Likewise his every film, Highway is a sort of social commentery about child sexual abuse. It is an achievement being an intricate task to convey the pain and intensity behind it. Highway and Alia's acting performance convey every bit of it.
The need by Veera at the end of the film about being safe at home is equally important as it is important outside shades the light on current social conditions that we see.
It is not only Veera's childhood haunting her present, but, we see Mahabir who abducts Veera before her wedding night, is also undergoing similar kind of trauma because of his disturbed childhood. He is not a true Mahabir who abducts Veera, it is what the situation has made out of him. Instead he is a soft and pure soul. And we come across this truth as the story reveals. Veera and Mahabir talk more about their childhood, making themselves free and peaceful and we end up seeing them falling for each other. At a particular point in the film, we see Veera dance on rock music. We all can pretty agree on dancing as one of the primary expressions of ourselves to celebrate our freedom and joy.
I would co-relate this scene when I was watching a recent Taika Waititi's political satire film - Jo Jo Rabbit. A trapped jew girl when asked, "What is the first thing you will do when you will be free?" Her one word answer "Dance" sums up everything. And, that's an underlying idea here. Afterall, cinema is about human expression as much as we feel it to be as entertainment.
We don't give damn about our conscience in a gross way because we are imposed to live alongside a surface of forced realities. Highway creates the route of self observarance and freedom from the surface to achieve exceptional depths of yours.
In a nutshell, Highway can be about everyone of you.
🎬 Highway by Imitiaz Ali