Saiyaara

A few days before I finally watched “Saiyaara” upon its Netflix debut, I had the privilege of seeing “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” for the first time in theaters. The quintessential Hindi film romance (directed by Aditya Chopra, who produced “Saiyaara”) still excels for all the reasons it did 30 years ago, the same reasons that have kept it screening for voracious crowds for as long.

Something else though. The timid girl, the ruffian guy. As Vaani (Aneet Padda) sat down with Krish (Ahaan Panday) in Mohit Suri’s “Saiyaara” and asked him not to smoke or swear, my mind flashed to Raj (Shah Rukh Khan) and Simran (Kajol) in the barn where she balks at the sight of him chugging cognac “in front of a girl” to keep warm. The women are simple, innocent, in need of protection; the men are wild, free, and inevitably drawn to the righteous path of loving these women.

Now, Vaani Batra is almost definitely clinically depressed, and that’s not her fault. Her fiancee dumped her via phone call while she waited for him at the courthouse six months prior, and meeting Krish — let alone working with him, bonding with him — is causing some sort of system overload. I will protect the Big Twist that I myself managed to evade for three months, which gives the film its emotional potency depending on who you ask (not me!).

“Saiyaara” debuted in U.S. theaters on July 18, quickly becoming the second highest-grossing Indian film of 2025 and the highest-grossing Indian romantic film ever (a statistic that comes with the caveat of classifying “Kabir Singh” as a romantic film). Indian films usually stay in U.S. theaters for a week or two, but one month later “Saiyaara” was still playing multiple times daily at the Times Square AMC Empire theater, an indicator of smash hit success.

Online, “Saiyaara” took over the Bollywood algorithm on any platform. From remixes to memes to emotional fan reactions, the film claimed a fiercely loyal and notably young audience that arguably hasn’t connected with anything this strongly in years.

The reality is that commercial Hindi cinema has set a shockingly low bar over the past decade; action movies that earn big at the box office but offer nothing new or noteworthy, new age romance that takes the romanticism out of romance; and launch after launch of the next generation of performing talent which never lives up to its legacy and persists anyway. There are highs — like three Shah Rukh Khan movies in a year, “Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani,” — but they arrive amid plummeting lows (I won’t name them, but at least the memes were fun).

Within that context, almost everything about “Saiyaara” is refreshing. There’s an actual story seen from start to finish (thanks to the source material: South Korea’s “A Moment to Remember”) — Krish’s music career, Vaani’s return to herself, and the path they carve forward together — and a solid soundtrack from Mithoon, Tanishk Bagchi, Faheem Abdullah, Arslan Nizami, Vishal Mishra, Sachet-Parampara and The Rish (Rishabh Kant). Vikas Sivaraman’s cinematography tries its best to eschew the overexposed, airbrushed look of its contemporaries. Panday plays a convincingly gruff tortured artist alongside Padda’s struggling ingenue, and most of the screen time is devoted to their pairing instead of introducing tertiary excess.

But seeing “Saiyaara” hailed as the industry’s savior did not inspire me the way it’s intended to. Theater attendance in India is as scrutinized as it is in the States, with more and more old films being rereleased to boost ticket sales. The same questions keep rising. Will they ever make movies like they used to? Has social media ruined audience engagement? Have we lost a breed of star? As Hindi films and global cinema search for answers, “Saiyaara” is just a piece of the puzzle — and hopefully a guiding light out of dark times.

“Saiyaara” is now streaming on Netflix.