His love of land extended to the village, the community and the country. Land was the cause of conflict in many movies. He wrestled with his land for a living, which taught him hard work, patience and simplicity. The verbal exchange between the hero and the villain oozed with an exaggerated sense of pride and honour and was all the rage with the viewers. He was a family man but not one to flinch from gory fights as was evident from his blood-splattered gandassa (axe) on the movie poster. He was a simpleton but never the laughing stock. A common way to establish the hero in those movies was to show him saving a girl from being raped.
Whenever it faced a threat, he restored order. The jatt hero was at the centre of the moral universe of the village. The jatt genre in Punjabi cinema goes back to the ’80s. Last year, almost every Friday a new movie was released. It triggered a boom in Punjabi cinema which had faded due to terrorism over the ’80s and ’90s. Himesh Reshammiya is producing its Hindi remake with Akshay Kumar in the lead. The 2012 smash hit launched a wave of clone comedies: Carry on Jatta, Jatt Airways, Jatt Boys, Jatts in Golmaal and Jatt in Mood, to name a few. Juliet in the title hints at love in a foreign country, an altogether charming prospect for the Punjabi youth ever looking for a way out of the country.
Punjabi ballads are so full of doomed love, heartbreaking ironies, feuding clans and ruinous fate that Shakespeare can surely find a home away from home in a Punjabi cover of his most famous tragedy.īut Jatt and Juliet, the biggest blockbuster of Punjabi cinema, is actually a romantic comedy. It’s about time Romeo met a Punjabi jatti or Juliet met a jatt.