After the disastrous Ek Villain Returns (2022), Mohit Suri returns to his preferred playground and comfort zone: the star-crossed romance. The title of Suri’s latest movie Saiyaara itself means a wandering star which shines as brilliantly as it disappears suddenly.
Saiyaara is an apt showcase for Suri’s particular brand of brooding, semi-doomed love. Aneet Padda and first-time actor Ahaan Panday play young adults united by passion but stymied by circumstance. Upcoming singer Krish (Panday) has more swagger than hits under his belt. Vaani (Padda) is channelling her grief over a failed relationship into tremulous poems about togetherness and foreverness.
A cloud hangs over their relationship right from the start. Krish has a troubled back story, while Vaani struggles with a previous heartbreak. The plot twist that is awaiting the couple will be familiar to Mohit Suri fans, but it’s delivered with an intensity that is seductive rather than manipulative.
Sankalp Sadanah’s screenplay is an interweave of the old-fashioned, obstacle-interrupted romance with millennial and Gen Z anxieties about forming lasting relationships. Suri and Sadanah find clever ways to update the old playbook about possessive boyfriends, needy girlfriends and interfering exes. Krish and Vaani are forever uniting and parting, sometimes because of their behaviour and sometimes because of the scriptwriter’s moving finger.
In many ways, Saiyaara is a reprise not just of Suri’s previous projects but also of similarly themed movies. What makes Saiyaara special is the attention that Suri pays to the craft of storytelling, the brilliant songs by multiple composers, the convincing ardour of the age-appropriate leads. While Aneet Padda and Ahaan Panday have superb chemistry, Panday is more impressive as the wildcat with a soft heart.
The film’s deftest move is to wallow in the sadness that shadows the Krish-Vaani dynamic. It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all – nobody believes in this aphorism more than Mohit Suri, who cannot bring two people together without trying to tear them apart.
And yet, it works. The emotional scenes don’t go over the top. The songs take the story forward rather than coming in the way (which was the problem with Anurag Basu’s overstuffed Metro…In Dino).
Saiyaara’s lingering flavour isn’t restricted to the music, particularly the title track written by Irshad Kamil, composed by Tanishk Bagchi, Faheem Abdullah, Arslan Nizami and sung by Abdullah. Suri allows cinematographer Vikas Sivaraman’s long takes and fluid camera movements to breathe. We are fully immersed in the Krish-Vaani adventure even though some of it is corny, some bits should have excised altogether, and we know what to expect.
It’s like a music impresario says in the film about what makes a hit song: it should not be too deep, and it should have the flavour of the classic. Saiyaara has a “been there, felt that but press rewind anyway” quality, with an emotional pull as soaring as it is downbeat.
