Saiyaara review: Mohit Suri’s musical tale of love strikes all the right chords!

Starring Aneet Padda and introducing Ahaan Panday, Saiyaara is cut from the same cloth as the Aashiqui franchise, yet it confidently stands its own ground.

It’s hard to explain what it is about films like Aashiqui, those tragic love stories of heartbroken people doomed from the start, that move something within you. Maybe it’s the craving for an all-consuming kind of love. The kind that knows sacrifice, that’s selfish but only for that love, that hurts so much that it could kill you yet somehow heals you. Maybe that’s why these films work in ways we can’t quite put into words. Saiyaara lies in that same genre where Aashiqui 2 and Sanam Teri Kasam live forever. But while it walks a familiar path, it never forgets to be a version of its own. That’s why the film wraps you up completely, leaving you hurt and healed at the same time, bringing back the same feeling, not the same film.

The story follows a template we’ve seen before where two heartbroken souls find meaning and hope in life once again through love. While the tussle of the broken heart creating the best art or the artist sacrificing everything in the name of love goes on. In that sense if Aashiqui 2 was about an established singer who lost his voice to alcoholism and found it again in a girl, Saiyaara is about a struggling musician, Krish Kapoor (Ahaan Panday), who has music but no ruuh. He is angry at the world, burdened by his alcoholic father, and broken in ways even he can’t name, reminds of Rockstars

 Jordan. Until he meets Vaani Batra (Aneet Padda), who is as broken in her own ways. A romantic at heart, she's shaken out of her dream world by her fiancé leaving her on their wedding day. Two wounded people, carrying their own traumas and past find each other and in music, where they find an anchor. 

Calling it a Aashiqui 3 wouldn't be wrong at all because patent to the genre everything in the film serves that central love story! Whether it is profession, parents, exes, medical illness or money troubles - they’re all consequential only in how they bring the two leads closer. She’s a Hindi literature and journalism student working at a music magazine. He’s a cricket-loving, gifted musician chasing stardom amongst nepo kids. She’s a beloved daughter battling with early onset Alzheimer’s; he’s an unloved son, forgotten by his own father. She’s the lyrics he needed to complete his rhythm; he’s the music she needed to heal. 

Also Read: Materialists and Metro In Dino: Two films look at modern romance embedded in labels, longing, and love-ships!

On paper, they’re a perfect match. He teaches her that losing love doesn’t mean losing all the colours in life. She teaches him that you don’t need the whole world to love you; just one person who sees you in a crowd is enough. And who better to tell a story like this than Mohit Suri, a filmmaker who understands dramatic, all-consuming love, one that while consumes never lets you lose yourself. The kind of love where a look, a pause, or a single sentence can say everything. Like Rahul stopping Aarohi for one last glance in Aashiqui 2, here it’s Krish stopping Vaani to remind her, “Abhi kuch pal hai mere pass.” It’s a sentence that stays with you and perfectly syncs as a metaphor to what Suri wants to say with the film where music is part of memory that reminds you even when you forget.

If his earlier works had music as a witness to great love, here, music is the memory that holds everything together. It’s as if he’s paying tribute to music itself, verbalising how words strung across tunes somehow become part of our moments. All props to YRF for playing to the film’s strength for its marketing strategy. Instead of promoting its debutants everywhere, they let the music do the talking which paid off because watching Aneet Padda and especially Ahaan Panday onscreen didn’t feel like watching newcomers. I loved watching Padda in Big Girls Don’t Cry so I came with expectations and she didn’t disappoint as she plays the sweet, innocent girl who is naïve but never dumb. As for Panday, there's more work to be done especially when it comes to singing yet his style, raspy voice, and intense stare are enough to make you fall for Krish.

Saiyaara isn’t a profound take on love like Materialists or Metro In Dino. It doesn’t try to dissect or philosophise modern romance. This is a full-blown masala Bollywood film where logic takes a backseat and emotions take over for two hours thirty minutes where exes become twists in the tale and terminal illness becomes a threat. And honestly, I loved watching every bit of it because after a long time, there was a film that was fully committed to its vision, and actors fully committed to their director. Rather than trying to impress anyone, Saiyaara was busy being itself with so much feelings! No wonder on a first day first show, in a jam packed theatre, phones came out but only to record Ahaan Panday singing the title song as if we were all attending Krish’s concert. Maybe that’s what we need as a generation lost in love, escaping to a world where we are reminded of what 'feeling the feels' is like. 

Saiyaara is currently playing at theatres near you!

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