Critics’ Verdict: ‘Mirzya’ Is Surreal But Sadly Undercooked

The verdict is out- ‘Mirzya’ created a surreal world, but is an undercooked drama.

Film: Mirzya

Director: Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra

Cast: Harshvardhan Kapoor, Saiyami Kher, Om Puri, Anuj Choudhry, Art Malik

Excerpts from reviews of the film Mirzya :

Between the past, the present, and the maybe, Miryza ends up fitting nowhere. Mehra reaches for profundity and visual poetry and does a good job surrounding his passive and ineffectual leads with Shankar Ehsan Loy’s superb soundtrack, Gulzar’s weight lyrics and Pawel Dyllus’s striking cinematography, but the resulting hodgepodge lacks passion, curiosity and engagement. Despite the limp leads, the conceit might have passed muster with a linear story set entirely in the present. Mirzya is doomed by its inability to free itself from the weight of the original legend. A tragic romance that doubles up a cautionary tale about the consequences of rebellion gets the music video treatment. One song rolls out after another to suggest the heat of the heart, but the movie remains cold to its own possibilities.

Nandini Ramnath, (Scroll.in)

Mirzya is a blinding blob of colours - Polish cinematographer Pawel Dyllus is in his elements - and a mish-mash of musical sounds that traverse the entire distance between the deeply melancholic and mournful to the energetically peppy and playful. For a story of young and defiant love, Mirzya is too passionless to exercise a sustained hold on the audience.The director is overly intent on putting an experimental spin on a flamboyantly filmed but rather undercooked drama in which a girl and a boy sustain their love across two births only to run into a high wall of resistance on both occasions. Mehra’s love for over-dramatisation comes to the fore from the get-go, with the very way that the title appears on the screen. An arrow pierces through the heart of the letters in Mirzya to the accompaniment of deafening clank.

Saibal Chatterjee, (Movies.Ndtv.com)

Director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra creates a surreal world here. He experiments with his time warp film. He is confident about his storytelling technique. He has used it effectively in Rang De Basanti and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag. You don’t mind if Gulzar’s couplets cover almost the entire film. They are beautifully written and fantastically captured by the cinematographer Pawel Dyllus. Harshvardhan Kapoor has decided to debut with an unconventional film, and he gets noticed. He underplays it, still leaves his impression in shots where he is alone on the frame. Saiyami Kher looks mysterious as Sahibaan, but somehow the other sides of her personality don’t come out.

Rohit Vats (Hindustan Times)

Harshvardhan and Saiyami come from good acting stock. But they’re still rough around the edges. Harsh manages to give glimpses of his vulnerability and intensity as a performer. And, also his physical strength (the shirtless scene). While Saiyami, who withholds emotions in a few scenes, sparkles, Anuj makes an impressive debut. If you are drawn to stories that are high on aesthetics with lyrical narratives, Mirzya is a portrait that deserves a long look.

Meena Iyer (Times Of India)