Vicky Kaushal’s 5 Career-defining Performances

When he  is  not  busy going overboard , as he did in that execrable bogus bio-pic Sanju, Vicky Kaushal is  a portrait  of  controlled portrayals that bring out the  vulnerable, vital and  vile sides to every character’s personality. In a career  of  8 years  Vicky already has an impressive oeuvre to show to Katrina  Kaif and his children . Take  a look

1.     Masaan(2015):  Vicky Kaushal first gave us  a vivid idea of what he is capable  of in this  Neeraj Ghaywan masterpiece  on class oppression .As  an  actor with a deep link to  the Indian  middleclass  Vicky  manoeuvred his character in and out of the trauma and anguish that the under-privileged classes are perpetually subjected to. The young lovers played with an unspoilt naturalness by Vicky Kaushal and Shweta Tripathy, build an atmosphere of lulling gentleness around the plot that shatters to bits as the script moves to a zone of unexpected explosion. “Yeh dukh kam nahin hota,” the young bereaved lover played by Kaushal  screams in a moment of unbearable anguish. I swear, at that moment I lost part of me to the film forever.

2.     Zubaan(2016):  For those who thought Vicky Kaushal’s Masaan act a  year earlier was just a one-off flash in the pan , Zubaan is an  eye-opener. Kaushal plays Dilsher , the waylaid Sikh boy from Gurdaspur who only wants to be successful in ways that we normally describe success. So he schemes his way into the heart mind home and property of a business tycoon Sikand  ends up getting what he thinks he wants. ickey Kaushal plays the protagonist helps considerably in making director Mozez Singh’s job a lot easier. First Masaan and now Zubaan, Kaushal proves beyond doubt that he is among the most important acting talent to have touched base in Hindi cinema during the last decade. His command over his stammering speech left me stammering for words of praise. Kaushal’s Dilsher is  a portrait of self-destructive ambitions.Dilsher is stammering faltering fumbling bundle of self-regard. We know he will fall.The brilliant script (Sumit Roy, Mozez Singh) catches hold of Dilsher before he hits the ground. The end-game back in Dilsher’s village where he rediscovers his roots is individuated by a sharp sense of musical confluence where the traditional sound of Gurbani meets a rock-stadium outburst.This cloudburst of musical effusion is composed by an impressively versatile  composer Ashutosh Phatak who brings to the film  an appealing subtext of the universality that one seeks and finds in music and which , alas, eludes us in dealing with more practical considerations in life.

3.     Raman   Raghav 2: 0(2016):  There is no hero in Raman Raghav. We saw it coming. We’ve seen the rapid evaporation of heroism from the cinema of Kashyap, to the point where, Raman and Raghav, as played with virile adeptness by Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Vicky Kaushal are the two faces of red-hot diabolism. There are no signs of goodness in the two main characters. After a while it’s hard to tell the difference between the two main characters, much harder than it was in Badlapur the film whose morality was a precursor to Raman Raghav.Watch Vicky Kaushal have sex with  his girlfriend, it’s not love-making it’s hate-making. Vicky Kaushal has the trickier part. He must extend into his character its natural-born criminal tendency (born, we are told, from a bullying father) and also be shown functional within the precincts of a law. He is shown to be violent cocaine -snorting psycho (if Tommy Singh in Udta Punjab wore a uniform.…) and also brutal in bed with his girlfriend.In short, a complete asshole. Vicky’s inexperience as an actor did not hamper the full flow of trashiness into the character. Vicky  proved he was  the  actor to watch in the coming years.

4.     Manmarziyan(2018): Vicky Kaushal as Taapsee Pannu’s  cheesy DJ lover  worked hard on looking his part. The hair and the clothes and  body language exude a sense of selflimiting rebellion. It is never very clear whether the passion between Vicky and Rumi(Taapsee) is all about sex, or something more.Kaushal plays his morally and intellectually  challenged character with humour and empathy. It is  a performance of many splintered  parts  miraculously adding up to a  sense  of informal  completeness. Quite clearly Anurag Kashyap knows how to extract the  best out  of  Kaushal.

5.     Uri(2019): This is one my least favourite  Vicky Kaushal  performances, included here because this is  his biggest  hit to date  and the  only one which proves he can carry a  film on  his  own shoulders. Of course  the hero hear was  the patriotic jingoism. The villain  was our neighbouring county. Kaushal’s  Major Vihaan Singh Shergill was  adequately  valorous  and angry. But he  seemed unconvinced  by all the  Paki-bashing that went on in this  film. That , in  a way,speaks well of his attitude to war-mongering politics.