‘Tere Ishk Mein’ movie review: Aanand L Rai’s romantic tragedy is messy and magical in equal measure

Here, he dissects the anatomy of violence that the so-called alpha male/stalkers unleash with a painterly flourish. He doesn’t see him as a domineering ‘animal’ out to secure his territory in some concrete jungle, but as an everyman who inhabits the gully behind the shining India. His hurt, his rage, feel real — not a cosmetic counterpoint to the rise of the heroine in popular culture. Together with AR Rahman, Rai composes a chaotic symphony of desire and despair that seeks to strike a balance between psychological depth and unhinged melodrama, often tilting towards the latter.

Dhanush and Kriti Sanon in a still from ‘Tere Ishk Mein’
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Beyond the mythical iconography, Shankar (Dhanush) and Mukti (Kriti Sanon) present the clash of two world views on romance that have existed from time immemorial. Son of a notary (Prakash Raj), Shankar, a student activist, carrying the hurt of his mother’s painful death, is a feral force who is leading a lower-middle-class existence.

Mukti, a student of psychology, sees Shankar as a potential subject in her doctoral thesis on social violence, in which she postulates that love can cure rage. She sees violence as an appendix that can be done away with without harming the body politic, but she can’t see the storm that brews beyond books and labs until it threatens to sweep her away.

Reduced to a stone, Shankar initially sees her as a body with utilitarian value for ‘fun’. Both fulfil the conditions of the social brackets we live in, until physical appearances become immaterial, as writer Himanshu Sharma scratches the surface to hand us the ticket to the soul of his protagonists and the environments they inhabit. Social conditioning doesn’t allow Mukti to cross over the class barrier, but spurs Shankar to channelise his violent streak in the right direction. Or rather, the direction that takes him to her. Will he reach there? It is a long, meandering story that takes off and comes back to earth, both literally and metaphorically, but it is a story that needs to be discussed.

Perhaps, it demands a younger set of actors to portray the naivety that love and the nuts and bolts of the narrative demand for a smooth landing, but Rai is devoted to Dhanush, and the actor does his best to rise above the handicaps to make us believe.

As Shankar, Dhanush delivers a soul-baring performance, who has internalised every scar of unrequited love. Such is the power of his performance that even if you disagree with Shankar’s worldview, he tears down our emotional-intellectual scaffolding to make a space for himself in our hearts and minds.

The contours of the story and character demand that Shankar be a boy from the north. It is hard to imagine a South Indian as the president of the Delhi University Students’ Union. Also, the inherent logic of the class/caste clash would have worked better if the makers hadn’t given in to the urge to indulge Dhanush’s fans in his home turf. Like the college bit, the Air Force segment doesn’t segue smoothly into the leading strand. Atrangi Re suffered because the story’s emotional core was not seamlessly layered with the crust and mantle. Here, the gap has been filled, but faultlines remain, leaving a jarring impact.

Kriti Sanon and Dhanush in a still from ‘Tere Ishk Mein’
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

In his previous two outings with Rai, Dhanush didn’t get equal support from his female counterpart. Here, Kriti presents a credible portrait of the vulnerability of the affluent, educated class. As a girl who breaks the glass ceiling in matters of career but struggles to grapple with the chaos within, she keeps it raw and dignified at the same time.

As the fathers of Shankar and Mukti, Prakash Raj and Tota Roy Chowdhury masterfully bring out the unsaid part — the social divide that looks so deep that even challenging it seems foolish. But then cinema allows you to leap, and Rai has done it many times before. He may have scored a zero before, but here he scores and stirs.

Talking of score, Rahman’s music, as always, takes time to grow on you, but somewhere in between, it envelops you, with the signature “hmmmmm” motif making hearts go quiver in tense sequences.

The final act feels stretched and bloated, resulting in emotional fatigue, and when Rai and Himanshu start over-explaining the context, we go hmmmm….

Tere Ishk Mein is currently running in theatres.