Like life, there is much to be loved and hated in Aanand Rai’s swirling, heartbreaking sojourn into heartache. There are portions in the lengthy narrative where Himanshu Sharma and Neeraj Yadav’s writing and the actors’ performances lift the scenes to dizzying heights.
Then there are the downers, like the opening gambit on an educational campus, where we meet a wild Dhanush chasing a campus rival into a theatre where Kriti Sanon is lecturing on, believe it or not, the psychology of violence.
By the time this ambitious tale (aren’t all of Aanand Rai’s films too ambitious for their own good?) trots shakily but confidently to a Casablanca-like doomed-lovers’ finale, we are as exhausted as the leads. It took me a while to get out of my seat at the end.
Tere Ishq Mein is a stupefying blend of fragility and fury. The writing favours over-punctuation at times when a breather would have done well. But in the long run, the breathless pacing adds to the narrative’s turbulent allure.
Dhanush and Kriti Sanon play the cruel game of unrequited love with just the right proportions of anguish and regret. They don’t look well matched; which is a good thing: they are not meant to be. Interestingly, some of the supporting actors play their parts with as much sincerity as the leads, if not more. Prakash Raj is habitually smashing as the hero Shankar’s humble but sorted father. I have seen numerous actors from Anupam Kher to Pankaj Kapoor play the ‘sorted’ father. This one is special.
In fact, Prakash Raj is part of my two favourite sequences in Tere Ishk Mein: the beautifully shot (Tushar Kanti Ray, take a bow) chawl home visited by Mukti (Sanon). The place is so cramped that Shankar’s father doesn’t know where to hide his embarrassment.
In Aanand Rai’s cinema, cramped spaces hide huge hearts.
The other powerful sequence with Prakash Raj has Shankar’s father pleading with Mukti’s father (Tota Roy Chowdhary, excellent) for Shankar’s release. Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub is riveting as a seer with exemplary wisdom, although I must admit I didn’t follow his gyan beyond a point.
In an underwritten role, Paramvir Cheema as Mukti’s empathetic fiancé brings a warm glow to the screen, as does Priyanshu Painyuli as Shankar’s faithful friend (a part vivified by the actor).
I wish some of the other purportedly powerful episodes were written with equal scrupulosity. Lamentably, the tragic grandeur which Aanand Rai aspires towards is frequently foraged by excessive maudlinism. The climax is unmistakably morbid, with Sanon’s Mukti’s blood splashing all over the script.
Yes, Tere Ishk Mein gets carried away with its own tragic excesses. But the bleeding heart never stops beating. The fractured chunks eventually seem like extensions of the protagonist’s dark, disembodied personality.
Unrequited love never seemed more unsettling. Tere Ishk Mein is meant to be a “spiritual successor” to Aanand Rai’s Raanjhana. But it is a lot more. It celebrates the tragic grandeur of a love that is meant to be epic, but falls short of its target to tell us: love is not only blind, it can also be pretty dumb.
By the way, what’s with this obsession with smoking? Dhanush and Sanon look as convincing blowing into cancer sticks to seem bohemian as A R Rahman’s pale attempts at creating romance through music.
