Suri’s Second-Hand Love Stories Go Flat in Saiyaara

Arjun Menon observes that Saiyaara is ultimately a drab repetition of outdated concepts in a more antiquated form.

Director Mohit Suri, known for his pulpy love epics (Aashiqui 2, Ek Villain), is back with yet another romance that focuses on the frailties of a doomed relationship between rugged, out-of-sorts men and struggling, undecided women.

This formula has worked well for Suri in the past, with films that have examined love stories with a level of passion and intensity often missing in mainstream Hindi cinema.But he retreads his past ideas for Saiyaara and has run out of any new direction in his artistic instincts, capturing self-possessed love stories.His films often deal with thinly-drawn caricatures with emotional trouble falling into desperate love affairs that put them through the wringer and test their passions to the fullest. His films are more music video adjacent and flowery as opposed to real, breathing vessels for melancholic love adventures.

The stylised glossy aesthetics, song placements and dreary mood sometimes can be found in Saiyaara, but with diminishing returns.The hot-headed, ‘lost cause’ hero, falling madly in love with an angelic leading lady, is the gist of Mohit Suri’s artistic touches, and Saiyaara reconfigures the formulae.Krish (Ahaan Pandey) is a loose cannon who can go berserk at the mildest provocation, and the dreamy, hustler Vaani (Aneet Paada) clearly won’t put up with his boyish tantrums.The film is an endless barrage of hollow, plainly conceived conversational scenes between the two leads, and you sense the lack of experience with the performers clearly showing in their intimate scenes on screen.There is no sense of clear trajectory in their changing dynamics, but merely a paint-by-numbers checklist for a ‘Mohit Suri Self-Destructive Romance’ pointers that is supposed to stand in for any conflict.

Life goals and flashbacks to past flames emerge, and the conflict between the leads soars high with no emotional resonance.Krish suffers a heartbreak, becomes a rock star in the course of a dreamy montage, and reels under self-imposed melancholy breakdowns, and you see the film crumbling under the weight of its lack of interiority.

The attempts at registering the fiery intensity and smoldering passion between the two fall flat as they merely recontextualize cinematic cliches and story beats with no innovation.You see shades of Mohit Suri’s work in films like Malang and the exhausting one-note nature of the meandering screenplay is not helped by the washed-out, digital look of the film. No colours pop out, and emotionally-charged romantic encounters are shot with the wry novelty of a toothpaste commercial on steroids.The unrequited gazes, symmetrical blocking of heads pining for one another like stacks of deck arranged in frame over each other, looking smitten at each other’s eyeballs define Saiyaara.There are some moments when the music does the heavy lifting, as with many of Suri’s films.The flashy hollowness of the non-existent emotional stakes is underlined by the songs by a team of composers like Faheem Abdullah, Tanishk Bagchi, Arslan Nizami, Sachet-Parampara, Mithoon and Vishal Mishra, bringing some urgency to the bleeding heart of Saiyaara’s vacant romance.The rockstar who rises to fame with the lyrics jotted down by his lover in her diary is an idea that can only be stretched so far.This film could have easily been called Aashiqui 3, going by its similar artistic ambitions and story structures.

Despite the mundane, rough-around-the-edges nature of their performances, the two leads salvage this tropey love story with dedicated conviction.The grit, flavour, and timber of their commitment to hold interest even in the dullest of exchanges. Ahaan Pandey and Aneet Padda are made to work hard at selling the pathos of a convenient romance.

Films like Rockstar and Aashiqui worked for many reasons, but the most important being the film-makers and storytellers going the extra mile to tell a story that they deemed honest and real.Saiyaara never derives from that truthful soul and ends up being a bland rehash of old ideas served in an older bottle.

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