Have you been dragged to a door ke rishtedaar ki shaadi? A shaadi that is grand and opulent all right and even has amazing biryani but leaves you feeling like “sannu ki”, you just couldn’t care less. Mirzya is that state of mind!
With Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra at the helm of affairs and penned by literary royalty like Gulzar, it leaves you with a disconcerting feeling. There simply isn’t enough connection. We just can never get ourselves to care for the lovers or evoke empathy like a grand love story should ideally make us do.
Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra weaves a stunning tapestry. For the first ten minutes we are in a Trojan War-like setting with surgical strikes happening with special effects and CGI. Sadly, technical marvel is the only thing on display.
Brawny men on horses race past leaving behind a trail of white sand while Saiyami Kher looking like Helen of Troy with L’Oreal blue liner and eye makeup gapes in amazement. And we are amazed too because just in the first ten minutes, three songs from Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy’s kitty have already roared from the speakers. There are at least a dozen more songs to weather and trust me, this isn’t the best-case scenario.
Next, we meet two young kids - Munish and Suchi - classmates and best friends. They grow up to be Harshvardhan Kapoor and Saiyami Kher. Rajasthan must have royalty and so Anuj Chaudhry is a modern-day prince.
Circumstances conspire to separate them. But when they get together as consenting adults, the educated families turn khaps. And it is just all poetic, tragic and totally lacking in verisimilitude. Polish cinematographer Pawel Dyllus evocatively crafts the film and some of the visuals are truly breathtaking, but the predictable plot machianations dull the overall effect.
As a launch pad for the lead pair, Mirzya fulfils its duty. We do want to see more of Harshvardhan Kapoor. (Also literally, I personally would be happy to see the beard go.) He must be applauded for avoiding the run-of-the-mill kind of first film project that most star kids hammer us with.
He is sincere, has the required intensity and screen presence and is quite a swashbuckler. Saiyami Kher is gorgeous and at ease in the emotional scenes. Anuj Chaudhry, the dapper-looking prince, must grace us with his presence too.
Mirzya, even at just a little more than two hours, seems long and slow. Probably because it takes itself a tad too seriously. An “epic” love story that spans across ages and generations yet leaves us feeling squishy and uneasy. I’ll give it 2 QUINTS out of 5.
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