Director Aanand L Rai's new film poses an old question: can love douse the flames that violence sparks? Its search for an answer takes it nowhere in particular.
But inevitably for a film dedicated to "Mahadev and his Ganga", Tere Ishk Mein makes a brief stopover in the holy city of Benaras, where a priest-philosopher (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub in a special appearance) holds forth on love, death and salvation.
The lead actors, Dhanush and Kriti Sanon, playing characters named Shankar (God) and Mukti (salvation), do all that they can to convey intensity and passion, but the mess that they are called upon to sort out is too bloated to be wished away by their game efforts or washed away by the waters of the Ganga.
A large part of the trouble with Tere Ishk Mein is that it is helmed by a man and written by two other men, Himanshu Sharma and Neeraj Yadav. They believe that they know the effect that hyper-masculine aggression can have on a woman who holds that men, at least some of them, are capable of redeeming themselves, no matter how much damage they cause in doing so.
The film hems and haws its way through a story of obsession that is thwarted by a mammoth class and temperament divide between a hot-headed Delhi University student leader who needs little provocation to resort to force and a senior bureaucrat's studious daughter working on a thesis on violence and how it is possible to curb it if one tries hard enough.
About 30 minutes in, it is as clear as daylight that the film's central premise is unconscionably contrived. Mukti Behniwaal (Kriti Sanon), faced with scepticism from her PhD guides who tell her in so many words that her line of thinking is fanciful, is bent upon proving her theory that violence-prone Alpha males can be reformed and turned into docile beings.
She talks Shankar Gurrukkul (Dhanush), the aforementioned belligerent guy who thinks nothing of beating people to pulp, into serving as a human guinea pig for her experiments aimed at substantiating her 2200-page submission.
Wonder of wonders, the man agrees to help out because she is a beautiful woman and Valentine's Day is around the corner. That is how outrageously 'inventive' the screenplay is: the Beauty not only tries to tame the Beast, but she also prods the ogre to get in touch with his softer side and give decency a chance. Pretty pat and fatuously facile.
Mukti insists that her 'relationship' with Shankar would be 'work' and nothing more. But the latter takes the frequent meetings very seriously until Mukti turns the tables on him after he insists that all work and no play can make Shankar a dull boy.
But when she does offer the guy an opportunity for some fun, he freezes and takes to his heels. But this is not where Tere Ishk Mein begins. It starts off in the air. Literally. And as the story unfolds, no matter how high it wants to fly, it never ceases to be airy-fairy, when it is not outright disconcerting.
When we first meet the male protagonist, he is Flight-lieutenant Shankar Gurrukkal, an irascible and overconfident fighter pilot averse to taking orders. He first flies too low and then too high. When he returns to terra firma after an unauthorised sortie, he is grounded for insubordination.
A counsellor is summoned to work with Shankar and rid him of his anger issues. The lady who is assigned to the task is Mukti Behniwaal. She is heavily pregnant, drunk and in no physical condition to take up the job.
But she does because, seven years ago in Delhi University, their paths had crossed and the one-sided affair had ended in disaster. The rest of the film, which darts back and forth between the Leh station of the Indian Air Force and the DU campus and its surroundings, is devoted to spelling out the whys and wherefores of the imbroglio that puts Muti beyond the reach of Shankar.
The things that transpire between Shankar and Mukti and between Shankar and Mukti's ill-mannered IAS officer-dad (Tota Roy Chowdhury) over a runtime of nearly three hours are difficult to digest given that the lady in the muddle is a qualified psychologist who should know better than pushing the man over the edge while letting him mess with her mind.
The encounters between the two are discomfiting, too, given the ease with which Shankar toys with Mukti, pushing her further and further into a corner. Why must a woman put up with a man who keeps trifling with her against her will even when she drops huge hints that her world and Shankar's are different and ne'er the twain shall meet.
There are points in the film when the boorish man is sought to be passed off as a victim (you've guessed it, there is childhood trauma lurking in the backdrop but it has nothing to do with his benign court notary-dad, played by Prakash Raj).
It gets worse when the weight of guilt is transferred to Mukti when Shankar needs another escape route. The gaslighting has an effect and the woman begins to question her own choices in the matter of her treatment of Shankar.
Tere Ishk Mein is the sort of movie where the negotiations between human beings is strictly via declamatory ultimatums. Shankar's boss, Group Captain Shekhawat (Vineet Kumar Singh), indulges in constant brinkmanship with his best but troubled pilot, so does Mukti's class-conscious father with a boy who will not take no for an answer.
As for the now-on, now-off relationship between Mukti and Shankar, it is always a case of clear threats being held out: alternating between "you do this or else" and "I will do this only if you do that". That is about the only way in which the circuitous and chaotic plot is attempted to be advanced.
This is "an A.R. Rahman musical". That's a small mercy. While the score works, little else in the film is music. Tere Ishk Mein is a love story that is an advertisement that love can do without.
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Dhanush, Kriti Sanon, Prakash Raj
