From Raazi to Sardar Udham: Vicky Kaushal’s 5 most defining performances

Since then, he has known the valleys alongside the peaks. At times, he has inhabited propagandist cinema, yielding returns as certain as they are vast but also very much troubling the social ethos. At others, he has become the voice of conscience in The Great Indian Family, and in between, he has simply entertained, elevating yet another Raju Hirani caricature in Dunki. Today, as he turns thirty-eight, it is worth tracing the arc of his defining performances. In an industry increasingly dominated by Singhs and Kapoors, with Aryans, Raos, and Khurranas jostling for space, Kaushal reminds us that there is always room for a presence that surprises, that unsettles, and that eventually, has the last laugh.

So here we go! The top five performances of Kaushal: 

5. Masaan 

A still from Masaan.

A boy in love. A lower-caste youth haunted by the boundaries society has drawn around him. Much has been said about Kaushal’s breakout performance in Neeraj Ghaywan’s Masaan. Much more will be said in the years to come. “Ye dukh kahe khatam nahi hota bey?” became a meme for a generation, devoid of its raw reality. But Deepak’s grief was never just a line; it was embedded in the very grammar of first love. The thrill of spotting your crush on Facebook, the nervous anticipation of sending a friend request, the simple joys of hanging out in melas, the delicate awkwardness of picking a gift, the fleeting ecstasy of glimpsing her in a crowd, the shy poetry of gestures that speak louder than words. These small, soaring moments very much defined his existence. Thus, then the most unforgettable moment comes when he flies a balloon across the square, hoping she will notice, much later, only to discover her lifeless body through the ring she wore. It is a brutal awakening. Deepak comes of age before he is even asked for it. A portrait of a boy forced, mercilessly, to become a man.

4. Manmarziyaan 

A still from Manmarziyaan

A man-child. A lost lover. Confusion is the lifeblood of Anurag Kashyap’s Manmarziyaan, where Kaushal inhabits one vertex of a love triangle that is kinetic yet anxious, elated yet turbulent. DJ Vicky Sandhu could have easily been an archetype, a cliche of commitment-phobia. In fact, in other hands, the character might have well collapsed into villainy or worse juvenile folly. But in Kaushal’s grasp, he is laden with empathy, burdened by the struggle to reconcile desire with fear. In his hands, he becomes a consciousness trapped in its own indecision. His arc insists on the interiority of a man incapable of bridging the gap between longing and action. Thus, in its most affecting moment, right at the interval mark, where Rumi (Taapsee Pannu), waits for him, and he comes. But he cannot summon the courage to take her away. Music swells, tears well, and in his eyes is captured a generation of lovers suspended between letting go and holding on. A portrait of a man casting off his childish ways.

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3. Raman Raghav 2.0

A still from Raman Raghav 2.0.

A brooding, corrupt cop. A son slowly sinking into silence. Kaushal inhabits the darkest recesses of Kashyap’s Raman Raghav 2.0, a serial killer thriller that the world hailed for Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s stupendous portrayal of Raman. But it is, in truth, Raghav, through Kaushal’s tormented lens, who forms the film’s fulcrum. The film was never a study of a killer’s psyche. It was always a story of unspooling, of a cop descending through layers of moral decay, of a consciousness eroding. It insists upon this from its very first frame, as it announces, rather loudly, that it is not about Raman, but about Raghav, the image in which Raman’s chaos is reflected and completed. Thus, its most searing moment arrives when Raghav confronts himself in the mirror, the reflection he cannot escape, after his partner has shown him the magnitude of his own desolation. A portrait of a man in absolute freefall.

2. Raazi

A still from Raazi.

A shy army officer discovering love. A husband caught between duty and devotion. Meghna Gulzar’s Raazi was, above all, always, a love story: not necessarily about allegiance to the nation, but about two star-crossed lovers bound by circumstance. Alia Bhatt commands the screen as Sehmat, yet it is Kaushal’s Iqbal who forms the film’s moral axis. The tragedy of the story would lose all its weight if the “enemy” were not Iqbal, a man whose humanity complicates every choice. Kaushal, who was still a year away from Uri: The Surgical Strike, did something blasphemous for fans of the blockbuster: he humanized a Pakistani soldier. In that sense, the film becomes a marriage story of its own kind. Notice the first time Iqbal sees Sehmat, their first conversation, their first kiss. Notice how he gives her space, how he respects her privacy even as she silently wields it against him. Notice how he plays Hindustani classical music upon learning it is part of her upbringing. Notice how, through these gestures, he sheds posturing and patriotism. Thus, the most heartbreaking moment arrives in the climax, when in his attempt to save her, he loses himself instead. A portrait of a soldier lost to love.

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1. Sardar Udham 

A still from Sardar Udham.

A revolutionary determined to make a difference. A man whose pursuit of justice refuses to be tainted by vengeance. It is fitting that Kaushal gave his career’s most luminous performance in a film, (Shoojit Sircar’s finest work), where shades of all his past formidable roles converge. The brooding fury of Raghav, the ache of separation like Deepak, the restless yearning of Vicky, the tender innocence of Iqbal, all find some sort of resonance in Udham Singh. Yet the greatness lies not in synthesis alone, but in Kaushal’s embodiment of acting as reaction rather than performance. For much of the film’s near three-hour span, he traverses the globe for a cause he believes in. It’s nearly a dialogue-less performance, where his rage does all the talking. The angry young man is realised in its purest form. And the only time when he is really alive is when he is in love. The adolescent smitten, the man tender in his romance. Thus, its most devastating moment comes as he enters the suite of a massacre to save his beloved, only to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of death, forgetting she lies among the fallen. He changes, inevitably, because no revolution is greater than love, and the portrait that remains is of a lover lost to himself.