'Tere Ishq Mein', directed by Anand L Rai and starring Dhanush and Kriti Sanon, arrived in theatres last year carrying enormous expectations. Audiences hoped this reunion of Rai and Dhanush would recreate the cinematic magic of 'Raanjhanaa'. But the film fell well short of those expectations, and its theatrical run drew a muted response from audiences.
Ghaywan Speaks Out Against the Film
Director Neeraj Ghaywan, whose film 'Homebound' is India's official Oscar entry, has recently spoken out sharply against 'Tere Ishq Mein'. In a conversation with Yuva, Ghaywan pointed to a troubling pattern in Hindi cinema today where toxicity is being deliberately packaged as edgy and cool. Filmmakers chasing this trend, he said, keep inserting gratuitous, purposeless scenes that add nothing to the story.
The Scene That Disturbed Him
To make his argument concrete, Ghaywan described a specific scene from the film. After being betrayed in love, Dhanush's character throws Gangajal at Kriti Sanon's character. The problem lies entirely in the execution: the scene is filmed in a way that makes it look, at first glance, exactly like an acid attack being carried out on screen.
Ghaywan admitted that the scene left him personally shaken, and that he too briefly believed he was watching an acid attack unfold. This led him to ask a pointed question: if a seasoned filmmaker was left this unsettled, how shattered must acid attack survivors have felt watching those same images in a cinema hall? He did not mince words, calling the scene outright pointless and cheap.
The Bigger Problem: Violence in Cinema
Ghaywan's concern extended well beyond that single scene. He also addressed the broader trend of gratuitous violence in Indian films. When a character is shown being slapped repeatedly on screen, he argued, it inflicts real psychological harm on women who have already survived abuse in real life. He was careful to broaden the point as well: this is not exclusively a women's issue. Anyone who has ever been victimised or subjected to cruelty at any point in their life, he said, can be profoundly and lastingly affected by watching such scenes play out on screen.
