Tere Ishk Mein Movie Review
Who is the Hindi film hero? In the 70s, it was the brooding, anti-establishment male who needed to earn for his mother’s medicines and his sister’s marriage. In the 90s, when I was growing up, it was the guy who was trying to land a job while also dreaming of dancing with his beloved in picturesque “foreign” locations. If I think specifically of a college romance, the hero, for me, was the new guy on campus. The one who mostly kept to himself but sprang to action when a girl was harassed or a bunch of rowdies were beating up a sole, innocent guy. The modern-day hero, however, is actually the leader of the miscreants. In Tere Ishk Mein, when Kriti Sanon’s Mukti first encounters Dhanush’s Shankar, he is chasing to hit another college student. When she tries to stop him, he takes her hand and brushes it against his cheek. Then, he proceeds to wink at her and she too can’t help but suppress a smile. It all plays out like it is a meet-cute. A harassment incident from life is handled like a romantic sequence on celluloid. The old villains have become the new heroes. Meet the brutes.
Directed by: Aanand L Rai
Starring: Dhanush, Kriti Sanon, Priyanshu Painyuli and Prakash Raj
Written by: Himanshu Sharma and Neeraj Yadav
To us, however, Shankar is first introduced as a maverick air force officer. Yes, the one whose personality would be nothing if he didn’t flout his superior’s orders (“But sir, he is the best we have”). Shankar houses a distrust, an anger. After a reckless act during patrolling, he is grounded and asked to undergo counselling. Enter Kriti’s Mukti. She is visibly pregnant, popping pills like its candy and drinking to put Devdas to shame. Clearly, nobody’s idea of a counsellor. When Shankar looks at Mukti, he excuses himself because he “wants to vomit.” Odd choice of words. But, still, it is clear that between them, the water is not yet under the bridge.
From here, the film proceeds in two timelines. The current one has Shankar in the middle of an impending war and another is set in his and Mukti’s college days. If you ever watched a Hindi film and thought that the heroine’s character arc only revolved around reforming the hero, here that also gets to be a plot point. Mukti is a research scholar who has to justify her “2200-page” thesis which, if I understood correctly, suggests that violence in society is an “appendix” that can be removed. To prove that she takes the college rowdy Shankar as a subject and thus begins their Joker-Harley Quinn-coded love story. Her ways to reform Shankar are less counselling and more casual dating (She hangs out with him, goes for drinks, even offers to have sex). My favourite is Mukti teaching Shankar the importance of non-violence by asking the guy he beat up to hit him back (when the guy does, Shankar’s best friend shouts “Mahatma Gandhi ki jai” umm?).
But Shankar won’t be so easily reformed. After an unnecessary detour which has him clearing the UPSC prelims, he returns to Mukti to show his worthiness for her, only to find her giggling with a sweet-natured guy she actually wishes to marry. Betrayed, Shankar takes Molotov cocktails and sets Mukti’s house on fire on day of her engagement. Another despicable act of violence but the makers portray it with incriminating neutrality. Other characters might not be condoning Shankar’s acts but the film seems to be on his side. Mukti rejects him and is even scared of him, but the viewer never is.
Tere Ishk Mein seems like a desperate attempt by director Anand L Rai and writers Himanshu Sharma and Neeraj Yadav to rope-in the fans of Raanjhanaa (2013). The film has all the elements to make it box-office proof: an alpha male protagonist, a war with Pakistan and also an IAS attempt. If Animal, Fighter and 12th Fail walk into a bar, Tere Ishk Mein is the hangover. It is a film which brazenly takes questionable stances for seventy per cent of its runtime and then suddenly tries to get on the right side. The result is a confused mish-mash where after a point anything goes. A scene shows Mukti walking away from her wedding, turns out she actually got married to the same guy, another has Shankar betraying his traits and agreeing to take care of a baby that is not his, a beloved character also makes an appearance for pure nostalgia baiting.
Raanjhanaa for all its flaws, was a film coming from a raw, genuine space. Its spiritual sequel though is only trying to be as vile and violent as possible to attract audiences to the theatres. While watching the film during a morning show, I sighed when I heard a group of young girls giggle at Dhanush’s antics. Then, I noticed that the guy who was sitting in front of me has been missing since the interval. Not all heroes wear capes.