Saiyaara: When Heartbreak Spilled Beyond the Screen
When Saiyaara finally reached theatres, it wasn’t just another romantic drama — it was the culmination of years of creative persistence, emotional exhaustion, and quiet rebellion. Directed by Mohit Suri and produced under the Yash Raj Films banner, the film tells a story of love, loss, and the things people leave behind in order to survive. But what audiences didn’t see was that the struggle behind the camera was just as layered as the one unfolding on screen.
A Love Story that Waited for Its Moment
At its heart, Saiyaara follows Krish Kapoor (Ahaan Panday), a young musician haunted by his father’s alcoholism and his own buried guilt, and Vaani Batra (Aneet Padda), a woman dealing with the cruel onset of memory loss. Their love begins with laughter and shared music but evolves into something far more fragile — a confrontation between passion and mortality.
The feelings that arise seem genuine because the process of creating Saiyaara involved an emotionally strenuous journey of its own. Word has it that director Mohit Suri held onto the story for nearly seven years before it came to fruition. He claims it was rejected by producers numerous times; not due to the story’s inadequacy, but because it was too unconventional to the standard Bollywood romantic narrative. Suri’s approach was of intimacy, dimness, and raw suffering. He sought for unrecognizable talent, preferring to avoid the industry ‘glamour’ and cascading celebration to the score. He sought music that mourned or wept.
That insistence nearly cost him the film. Industry friends later divulged to him that Saiyaara was set to a new storyline, with its music being restructured and the story’s scales being shrunk before Yash Raj Films finally gave it a home. But once the cameras were set to roll, it was not only the start of production, but the start of a story that had been suppressed for so many years.
Heavy Lifting for New Actors
Ahaan Panday’s Saiyaara experience was not only a debut, but also an unyielding test of patience and pressure. Given the Bollywood lineage, there was no mercy with the throngs of expectations that were piled upon him. The scrutiny was so intense that even the smallest of gestures and the faintest expressions were criticized. Provocatively, Ahaan did not choose to debut in a glorified crowd-pleaser, and instead, selected a role with a considerable degree of fragility. Krish was not a heroic character; he was broken and conflicted. They were painful in a way that was disturbingly real.
Ahaan’s role preparation extended to months of training, which included acting, voice modulation, and emotional breakdown scenes. During shooting, he often quieted and isolated between scenes and would not speak to anyone during those moments. He needed to process each scene’s emotional intensity and, this, in exhaustion, would give his character a resonate rawness.
Aneet Padda, who played Vaani, was simultaneously shooting and finishing her education, often flying between Mumbai and her university. There was, shooting, her emotional scenes, and the academic pressures of exams and education, which at times became overwhelming and unmanageable. This very uncertainty, she found, had shaped her dynamic portrayal of Vaani — a young woman anchored in love and losing pieces of herself.
The Silent Costs of Making Emotion Real
Saiyaara’s originality transcends the actors’ personal emotions and mirrors their characters. Suri’s style of direction required his cast to live the roles rather than act them. Many scenes were filmed with natural light and, minimal dialogue, which forced the actors to communicate and the audience to use their imagination during pauses, glances, and silences.
Vaani’s breakdown scenes, especially the one where she forgets her lover, left the set in tears. So much so that shooting was halted for an hour. There were instances, the crew said, where the line between fiction and reality disappeared. Watching the scene, people were witnessing something human and raw.
There were, of course, other challenges. Production faced the trifecta of shooting delays, budget constraints, and geographic limitations. Because of pandemic-era travel restrictions, the crew had to cancel plans to shoot some scenes abroad and replicate the envisioned settings to a small-town rustic India. While it strained the schedule and budget, it worked for the film’s intimacy.
The Storm Around the Release
The response for Saiyaara was explosive. Beyond packed houses, the film was an internet sensation. Videos of emotional audiences weeping during the climax. In some theatres, viewers reportedly stood and clapped through the end credits.
However, the same virality that brought fame to the film also brought it some criticism. Did some audience clips, especially the tearful ones, come from the film’s marketing teams? Even from within the industry, some people suggested that the outpouring of emotion seemed overdone. The speculation became a story in its own right: Were audience members really paying to be part of the story, or was it all a clever marketing ploy?
Mohit Suri deflected the speculation, saying, “If people cried, it is because the story hurt somewhere they have been hurt before.” Despite his attempt to quell the speculation, it was too deeply entwined with the film to let go.
The marketing of the film also triggered a discussion about the nature of the marketing itself. Did it really go too far, to the point that it eclipsed the emotional core of the film? After all, it’s the first time they marketed a heartbreaking story, not for the actors, but for the emotions it stirred within the audience.
When Life Echoed Art
The filmmakers’ personal experiences made the movie’s themes of loss and endurance that much more poignant. Suri’s lengthy wait for production was reminiscent of Krish’s struggle for acceptance. Ahaan’s struggle to be recognized as more than a “star kid” echoed Krish’s struggle to break free from his father’s shadow. Aneet’s efforts to balance her personal life and career was in tune with Vaani’s relentless pull between duty and love.