No wonder this quaint film is produced by the super fashion designer Manish Malhotra. There is a sartorial elegance about Gustaakh Ishq, an old-world charm that is rare, precious, and fragile. Not that anyone is dressed to kill. Yet, there is an aura of a beautifully draped saree, a well-cut minimalist sherwani, and a touch of nawabi languor in the way the characters occupy their dilapidated spaces, crumbling havelis that have seen better days, but are not willing to cry over split mulk.
The characters are all Muslims. But they don’t recite the namaaz, nor are cries of Allah-o-Akbar heard in the background. This is a narrative that occupies its world comfortably. There is a sense of time coming to a halt as characters weave their way through a luminous labyrinth of shayari that is more accessible than courtly, courtship behind veils, and romance that was not prescribed in an app.
Prasshant Jha and Vibhhu Puri’s writing is reminiscent of Anita Desai’s novel In Custody (filmed as Muhaafiz by Ismail Merchant). A young publisher, Nawabbuddin (Vijay Varma), travels from his home in Delhi to a small culturally plush town in Punjab to meet and learn from a derelict poet, Aziz (a magnificent Naseeruddin Shah). Predictably, Nawabuddin’s self-interest evaporates when he meets the poet’s quiet but determined daughter, Minni (Fatima Sana Shaikh).
It is a slight story buoyed by the excellent writing and Vibhu Puri’s gentle direction, which never falls short of breath. The pace, though languorous, never weighs on the characters. These are people who belong to another era and are not apologetic about the absence of animation in their frozen lives.
The actors ensure our interest doesn’t flag even when the plot seems to be heading to no place where we would like it to. The film is shot like a dream, with the relics and monuments of the culturally rich city filmed by cinematographer Manush Nandan as characters rather than pretty pictures. Although most of the visuals convey the stench of decadence, the mise-en-scène exudes a strong sense of aesthetic radiance. The characters stand above their squalor, immunized from their destiny by their intrinsic irradiance.
Naseeruddin Shah is perfectly cast as the decadent poet. He echoes Shashi Kapoor in Muhaafiz but brings so much more density and joie de vivre to the poet’s part. Vijay Varma and Fatima Sana Shaikh, as the not-so-young lovebirds seeking to express their dormant impulses in an environment of repression and self-denial, define their characters with tenderness and longing.
Varma is especially effective in a sequence with his screen brother, Jumman (Rohan Varma), reminding the upstart of all the times when he held his sibling’s hand. Here is an actor who knows his craft, and is in no hurry to display it.
Gulzar’s lyrics are expectedly an asset. But Vishal Bhardwaj’s music and songs don’t tell anything we haven’t heard before.
What works in favour Gustaakh Ishq in the long run is its deliberate ruminative mood. The tone, texture, and templates hark back to an era that is gone with the wink. But the sense of reclamation of the past that the narrative creates without building a mountain of nostalgic montages, and extraneous props (no gramophones!) is disarming.
When we leave the lovers in a beautifully directed embrace, the cellphone makes its debut in their lives. That’s when the days of uncorrupted courtship ended.
