I loved Kaminey even though I was a teeny weeny bit disappointed as I felt that it did not fully deliver what it promised in the promos. But it made up for its flaws by sheer delightful madness. So when I saw the same madness in Ishqiya promos, I was naturally excited. And Ishqiya not only met my expectations, it surpassed them! Its mad, its delicious, its sooooo wicked!
Set in the interiors of UP, Ishqiya is the story of two petty crooks Iftekhar (Naseeruddin Shah) and Babban (Arshad Warsi) who are on the run from their boss Mushtaq Bhai whom they have duped. They reach a small village near Gorakhpur to find shelter in the house of an old colleague Verma and are surprised to learn that Verma passed away a couple of year ago. His widow Krishna however allows them to stay in her house. Slowly Iftekhar and Babban realize that Krishna isn’t as innocent as she looks even though they can’t help getting fascinated by her. From here starts a game of love, lust, greed, deceit, betrayal, revenge……
The story sounds serious and dark but the movie is anything but serious. Ishqiya is a comic thriller – a very rare combo in Bollywood. Situations are both hilarious and volatile at the same time. There isn’t much of a story here but the interesting characters and outstanding dialogues (by Vishal Bhardwaj, who else!) and good screenplay ensured that there wasn’t a single boring moment in the movie. In fact, Ishqiya is full of little scenes that stay with you after you have walked out of the hall. Most of them are memorable because of the amazing dialogues. An example –Babban asks Krishna, “Verma ji kaise hain? Nange hain ya burke mein?”. Seeing Krishna’s blank look Iftekhar explains, “Iska matlab hai ki Verma ji faraar hain ya jail mein hain!”
Yes the dialogues are crude at times and a lot of abusive words are used but that adds to the wickedness of the movie. Inspite of all the crudeness, Ishqiya is never vulgar, never sleazy. The crude language just adds to the authenticity of the set up.
Another thing I loved about Ishqiya is that not a single character was completely white or black – everybody was grey and what delightful grey! Mushtaq coochi-coos with his wife on the phone while loading his gun to shoot a guy, a rich industrialist loves both is wife and mistress (in fact he is so loyal to his mistress that he refuses to be seduced by another woman!), a 15 year old dreams of becoming a sharp shooter and at the same time feels sorry for a widow……wicked, wicked, wicked!
A movie produced by VB has to have wonderful songs and as usual the Gulzar-VB combo does not disappoint. All four songs are beautiful in their own ways and have been picturised well too. I specially loved ‘dil to bachcha hai ji’ and Naseeruddin Shah’s expressions made it even more heartwarming.
Kudos to debutant director Abhishek Chaubey for making the most impressive and comfortable debut in the last many years. Like his mentor Vishal Bhardwaj, Chaubey also expertly makes a potboiler with the authentic background of UP’s cowbelt. His direction is almost flawless, the only time he somewhat stumbles is in the climax. But strangely the climax worked for me, it made me happy!
Again like VB, Chaubey also manages to extract the career best performances from his cast - specially Vidya Balan and Arshad Warsi. Won’t count Naseeruddin Shah here as he doesn’t need a good director to extract a wonderful performance from him! Arshad Warsi proves that he is a very underestimated and underutilized talent. He stands up to Naseeruddin Shah in every scene and provides most of the ‘laugh out loud’ moments.
Continued in comments......