Bollywood is in love again. Following Mohit Suri's Saiyaara, Aanand L. Rai, another master of the poetic portrayal of passion and pain, returns with a gripping exploration of love's destructive side, set against a social backdrop. Connected to Raanjhanaa (2013) by an umbilical cord, Tere Ishk Mein speaks of the magic of love lost in the logic of modern life, which compels us to exchange emotions. In Rai's universe, love is both poison and panacea, and once again, he has tackled a risky subject: the transformative power of romance.
Here, he dissects the anatomy of the violence unleashed by so-called alpha males/bullyes with painterly flourish. He doesn't see them as dominant "animals" seeking to secure their territory in an urban jungle, but rather as ordinary men dwelling in the ravine behind glittering India. Their pain, their rage, feel real, not a cosmetic counterpoint to the rise of heroin in popular culture. Alongside A.R. Rahman, Rai composes a chaotic symphony of desire and despair that seeks a balance between psychological depth and unhinged melodrama, often leaning toward the latter.
Director: Aanand L. Rai
Writers: Himanshu Sharma, Neeraj Yadav
Stars: Dhanush, Kriti Sanon, Prakash Raj
Beyond the mythical iconography, Shankar (Dhanush) and Mukti (Kriti Sanon) embody the clash of two worldviews of romance that have existed since time immemorial. The son of a notary (Prakash Raj), Shankar, a student activist burdened by the grief of his mother's painful death, is a wild force living a lower-middle-class existence.
Mukti, a psychology student, sees Shankar as a potential subject for her doctoral dissertation on social violence, in which she posits that love can heal anger. She sees violence as an appendage that can be removed without harming the body politic, but she can't see the storm brewing beyond books and laboratories until it threatens to engulf her.
Reduced to a stone, Shankar initially sees her as a body with utilitarian value for "fun." Both fulfill the conditions of the social classes in which we live, until physical appearance becomes irrelevant, as writers Himanshu Sharma and Neeraj Yadav scratch the surface to give us access to the souls of their protagonists and the environments they inhabit.
Social conditioning prevents Mukti from crossing the class barrier, but it compels Shankar to channel his violent streak in the right direction. Or rather, the direction that leads him to her. Will he make it there? It's a long, winding story that takes off and comes back down to earth, both literally and metaphorically, but it's a story that needs to be discussed.
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