‘Gustaakh Ishq’ Movie Review: Let There Be Poetry

The test of an effective Hindi film these days is the post-screening afterglow. If it’s a loud historical, the chaotic traffic and fumes outside feel like a relief. If it’s a button-pushing social thriller, some walk out with big chests and a renewed passion to blame someone. If it’s a patriotic biopic, there might be wet eyes and a desire to be very Indian. If it’s a love story, men stride out with an inflated sense of self-worth, corny grins and cloud-nine-sized delusions. At different points in life, I’ve been guilty of doing all of the above. Add Gustaakh Ishq to the list, a period drama about poets and lovers that’s so immersive and committed to its setting that I was overcome by an urge to speak in chaste Urdu and rhyme idioms with emotions. The cab driver did not appreciate my use of “qaatil” to describe the waiting time. He sped away the second I started waxing lyrical about English being a flight and Urdu being the nest we come home to.

Gustaakh Ishq isn’t the kind of film that usually gets it right. It has an old-world charm that most productions often stage as glib romanticisation and vanity. You can tell that director Vibhu Puri descends from the Sanjay Leela Bhansali School of Storytelling: the orchestrated lighting, the museum-like aesthetic, the casually precise visuals, the music as a set-piece of sentiments and gestures, the conviction in moments, even the narrative threads. The premise is Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam-coded. It’s 1998 in Old Delhi, and a young man named Nawabuddin Saifuddin Rahman Rizvi (Vijay Varma) needs a miracle to save the family business—the last Urdu printing press in the city. So he travels to Punjab under the guise of being mentored by a famous but retired shaayar, Aziz Baig (Naseeruddin Shah).

An aspiring poet himself, Nawab pretends to be a student of the old genius; what he really wants, though, is to publish Aziz’s lifework, earn a fortune and save his press. In the process, he falls for Aziz’s reticent daughter, Mannat (Fatima Sana Shaikh), the only one aware of his intent. I also thought of the Punjab portion of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge: imagine Raj arriving in the misty mustard fields of Punjab, actually wanting to start that beer factory, pretending to flatter Chaudhry Baldev Singh for his land and then falling for Simran on the side. The conflict in Gustaakh Ishq is its own, though, where the self-destructive idealism of art is softened by the designed atonements of masculinity.

What works for Gustaakh Ishq is that it is many genres at once. It’s a tense sibling drama: Nawab is the emotion-driven romantic who believes in the purism of poetry, while his ruthless younger brother wants to publish erotic fiction to save their press; they do not see eye to eye or ear to ear. It’s a nice mentor-protege dramedy: Aziz warms up to Nawab despite his doubts, and the old man is perceptive enough to encourage Nawab’s blossoming romance with his daughter. It’s obviously a love story: Nawab persuades a once-bitten-twice-shy Mannat to give his humanity a chance, despite her knowing that he has ulterior motives. It’s a father-daughter tale: Mannat aches to see Aziz recognised for his past life, which is why she welcomes the idea of a ‘fan’ being tutored by him. It’s a flawed-artist drama as well: Aziz Baig has the kind of backstory that typically invites the casting of Naseeruddin Shah, who has humanised the gifted-but-guilty patriarch like nobody else over the years. It’s also a neat meta touch to have Shah’s character resist mainstream fame and compromise, while Varma’s character aims to find a balance between artistic integrity and commercial gains. It’s always bittersweet to see Shah channel his age and experience — the sheer toll of living and creating beyond his contemporaries — into old men who say things like “don’t leave without warning, friend”. Movies like these use the mortality of greats as more of a coping mechanism than a weapon. His scenes with Varma are steeped in the subtext of proverbial baton-passing; it’s hard not to be moved.

Most of all, the film is a survival drama. It’s about the survival of a time, a fabric, an identity and a sound against all the odds. It excavates the relationship between the modern audience and the diversity of art, but also between Indian culture and the resilience of language. It says something that the plot connects the erasure of Urdu to the diminishing roles of storytelling and love. We’re so used to hearing Hindi being either bastardised or exoticised on screen that the vintage mix of Gulzar’s lyrics and Vishal Bhardwaj’s compositions (especially the haunting guitar riffs in ‘Aap Is Dhoop Mein’) supply the flowery dialogue and expressions. The songs, for once, make you want to stay in them; the exchanges keep us waiting for the next turn of phrase and verbal joust. The Muslim characters are such an organic part of the environment that it never feels like they’re performing Urdu as an aesthetic. At no point are they limited to labels, fetishised figures or the film’s ingrained commentary.

In an age where historical erasure and political narratives go hand in hand, the tagline of Gustaakh Ishq — “Kuch pehla jaisa” (something like before) — holds more significance. It’s far from perfect, but it trusts in a world of choreographed autonomy. Nawab’s mission starts as a self-serving one, though the screenplay never makes a big deal about his deceptions. There is often room for forgiveness, just as there is for poetry. The film does have a stereotypical opinion about loose-hearted men and their refuge in verse. Mannat’s persona, too, is reduced to ‘the woman who waits’ while the males wrestle with lofty ideas of salvation and redemption. The film resorts to a bit of needless theatricality in the final act, but its gaze remains reasonable and hopeful. There’s a musicality about its flaws, too, which is more than what one can say of movies about words in worlds and worlds in words. It’s not the most convincing climax, but by then it’s like watching a talented batsman stumble in the dying seconds of a match after scoring an audacious (or ‘gustaakhi’) century. As a viewer, you either choose to savour the romance of almost winning or get sidetracked by the reality of losing. I know which one I chose. My brief tryst with language nearly cost me a ride home — or a flight back to my nest.