Revisiting Alia Bhatt’s Highway: The road movie that marked actor’s birth as an artiste

A still from Highway featuring Alia Bhatt.

This was one of those rare Imtiaz movies where he did not have his male lead go through some sort of suffering which was later healed by his female lead. Alia’s Veera was not some manic pixie dream girl; she was a living, breathing human being who, at a young age, had had her own share of trials and tribulations so that when she finally gets abducted by a truck driver called Mahabir (a fine Randeep Hooda), she realises that she can be totally herself without any external judgement or pressure. Of course, many read the film as some sort of Stockholm Syndrome situation where a person falls for their captor. That could be a part of it, but Imtiaz had given enough depth to Veera for us to know that even if that was the case somewhere, it was primarily because of what Veera had gone through as a young individual.

Veera had loving parents, she came from wealth, she was soon going to marry a good-looking young man. According to society, ‘Veera’s life was set.’ But then a few days before the D-day, Veera is kidnapped by Randeep’s Mahabir and things change forever. It was not one of those performances where you thought, ‘Is this really her second film, she is already acting like a mature artiste, like she has been around for years.’ No, Alia as Veera felt raw, instinctual and sincere. It seemed to come out of her more organically than the Bollywood spectacle that was Student of the Year. You could see that sometimes it was not as effortless, but you could also see real, genuine talent. You could see that the script was inconsistent somewhere, but Alia gave all of herself to Veera. Alia, the actor, was born. A rather quick second coming, if you will.

It helped that Alia had a fantastic co-actor in Hooda, and a filmmaker like Imtiaz who knew what he wanted. But it was Alia who carried Highway’s some of the most funny, sweet, sensitive and heartbreaking moments. If Alia had been a lesser actor, Highway would have been a disaster. Instead, it ended up winning most of the critics and did an average business, minting slightly over Rs 30 crore in India, and over Rs 47 crore in total.

Now, the scenes; there are two sequences where she finally tells her truth regarding the sexual abuse she faced as a child — one, where she speaks about it to Mahabir, and then when Mahabir has died, and she yells out her ordeal in front of her parents and the abuser. Both crucial segments, Mahabir one more so because that’s when the audience also gets to know her backstory in all its painful detail for the first time. Alia was pure and heartbreaking, she performed it from a place of honesty, so much so that you felt like she was still a child when she did that. Stuck in her horrible, unforgiving past. Then there were the lighter bits, Alia in that fantastic AR Rahman song “Maahi ve” enjoying her new-found freedom, or Alia as Veera trying to seduce Mahabir and let him know that she is no longer scared of him, or the others.

The scenic locations of Rajasthan, Kashmir, Delhi, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh gave a freshness, a beauty to a film, which had ultimately a heart-wrenching conclusion. AR Rahman’s stellar score also helped matters, but it all would have been for nought if Alia were not in Highway.

Highway is available to stream on Disney Plus Hotstar.