A surprise hit, Saiyaara blends old-school romance with modern aesthetics, reviving the “forever love” narrative in an age of fleeting reels, capitalist fatigue, and emotionally starved storytelling. Sharad Raj understands and interprets why its work.

In a time when formulaic blockbusters are failing, Saiyaara has unexpectedly reignited the Bollywood box office. Directed by Mohit Suri and produced under the Yashraj banner, the film unites the raw emotion of old-school melodrama with sleek, modern aesthetics. Featuring newcomers Ahaan Pandey and Aneet Padda, Saiyaara taps into a deeper cultural longing for enduring love and meaningful storytelling, standing out in a social media-saturated era of fleeting attention. Its metamodern emotional framework, blending vintage Bollywood sentiment with a contemporary twist, makes it one of the most culturally resonant Hindi films of the year.  

Comes a Friday during a lethargic July monsoon in Mumbai and comes a film that brings Mohit Suri from the Mahesh Bhatt school of Bollywood potboilers collaborating with Aditya Chopra of Yashraj, a banner known for its timeless love stories. The result is that two newcomers, debutants Ahaan Pandey and one-film-old Aneet Padda, have set the box office on fire when mainstream Hindi films are sinking like Titanic at the box office regularly. It is not just swarming the box office but getting audiences to swoon and dance! No mean achievement. Ajay Devgn’s Son of Sardar, scheduled for a July 25 release, has been postponed to August 1!  

Old-School Charm Meets New-Age Cool

Saiyaara is a good old Hindi film as we knew them while we were growing up, sans any film theory or film school conditioning. So, to judge it by those parameters is a waste of time. It seamlessly combines the madness of Vishesh Films with Yashraj’s new age “cool and sleek” multiplex look. The result is an immensely watchable film with a good-looking lead pair who deliver for the most part. It is interesting to look at why amidst the glut of flops, a film not even publicized properly has broken all recent records. People of my generation would remember Kumar Gaurav and Vijeta Pandit’s Love Story and Kamal Hassan, Rati Agnihotri’s Ek Duje Ke Liye, that were mega hits at a time when Amitabh Bachchan was a one-man industry. Nobody knew them when those films came.

Metamodern Melodrama in a Postmodern World

The way I see it is the inherent meta-modernism of the film, which is not at all formal, for it has a classical melodramatic structure and aesthetics, but at the plot and emotional level. Saiyaara neither challenges form nor its mode of production, yet it challenges a lot at the story level. The murmurs and rumblings against global capitalism are getting louder and louder during the wars getting uglier, rise of the far right, growing violence, greed, unemployment, and inflation. The promise of globalization has failed miserably. Postmodern times have fractured our existence, isolated and alienated us. Perhaps we yearn for the grand narratives of the modern era.

Saiyaara brings the “grand narrative” of love as something everlasting, permanent and the only thing worth living for to the forefront. Sentimental as it may sound, but we all yearn for it. In the times of reels, shorts, Instagram, TikTok, situationships, and “no strings attached” relationships, Saiyaara revives the idea of “Janam Janam ka pyaar,” at a conceptual level. It brings this notion, which is now a thing of the past, into the present. The present world of social media, multiverse, podcasts, mega contracts, and where art is all about money. And it does that at many levels.  

Vani and Krish: A Balanced Couple

First at an emotional level as mentioned above. Secondly by characterization of Krish Kapoor (Ahaan Pandey) and Vani Batra (Aneet Padda), its lead pair. Krish is a Mohit Suri hero carved out of the Emraan Hashmi template—cynical, selfish, and violent. It is Vani, the harbinger of hope, who ushers in the old times, for she is out of sync with the social media-obsessed world despite working for an online magazine. The old and the new come together in her. The modern and the postmodern. Aneet’s Vani wants to break free from the claustrophobia of studios, social media pressures, and creating for profit, hits, subscribe, follow, and likes. She wants a sensory, tactile experience of the real world, yet she is not puritanical. For her, real art transcends generations. It needs to be created patiently and savoured for long. This makes Vani the antithesis of present-day short attention span culture of impatience, perpetrated by a certain world order.

Krish is not far behind. In sharp contrast to the vulgar machismo of Pushpa and RRR kind, Krish’s aggression is skin-deep, and he is genuinely perceptive, therefore vulnerable. Ahaan’s Krish can easily crossover and become an Animal, but Mohit Suri stops him well before it is too late. As a contrast that is strikingly different from the fascist animosity lapped up by the audiences not too long back, Krish values and respects the DON'TS of Vani without being “Prem.” Both Vani and Krish are not prude. They are normal sexually active lovers, a new age couple who do what they want to do. This in my view has made the film click so well with the viewers across age brackets and social strata.

A Bridge Between Eras of Cinema

Lastly but not the least, Saiyaara brings into a 21st-century film the sacrificial remanent of Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s fabulous Mili (1975) starring Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan, and Ankhiyon Ke Jharonkhon Se (1978) starring Sachin and Ranjeeta. Not to forget a Korean film that inspired Saiyaara, apparently.

Saiyaara is not old wine in a new bottle. It is about the two wines from Adifferent eras converging in a single film. The past enters the present cultural milieu and adds to it.