Review: Despite its Flaws Kartik Aaryan and Kiara Advani starrer Satyaprem Ki Katha contests commendable territory

Kartik Aaryan as SatyaPrem in SatyaPrem ki Katha. (Screen grab/ YouTube/ NadiadwalaGrandson)

“Ab hero heroine ki jaan nahi bachaega, toh hero kese banega?” Sattu aka Satya, played by Kartik Aaryan says in a scene from Satyaprem Ki Katha. It’s a pronouncement of Hindi cinema’s most common romantic trope – the heroine as the committed but dispensable influencer to the arc that takes a man from the point of ordinariness to the exalting heights of heroism. The heroine has always been a form of conquest, a personal journey that the hero must take through the geometry of wider social scrutiny. Conflict according to this age-old tradition has merely been an excuse for the hero to find himself, or for the most part, his violent self. Satyaprem Ki Katha doesn’t exactly abandon this trope, but it does, bravely, rival it with a version of its own. If only it were supported by a lead actor capable of pulling off the grimness of its implications, as easily as Kartik Aaryan pulls off the goofy comedic bits, and we could have called it a success. It is though, a film still worth reckoning with for the thorny reality it seeks to transport with the fragile, if glittery paper boat of Hindi cinema.

Kartik Aaryan plays Satya, a lousy, ill-mannered but entitled son of a Gujarati family. Satya is the archaic spoilt child, whose foremost priority is to get married, have kids and live the happily ever after that most of our cinema has copiously implanted in our minds. Satya’s best friend, in a frank admission of his amateurishness, is his soft father, played by a typically warm and jovial Gajraj Rao. Supriya Pathak plays his somewhat hardened mother.

Deliriously chasing companionship rather than work and purpose, Satya happens to see Katha’s spectacular dance performance and as is tradition in this sort of format, falls for her rightaway. Something, however, is off about her for this is a heroine on the cusp of sudden breakdown. Satya helps save Katha’s life after she attempts suicide. The result of this somewhat intrepid act of benevolence is marriage; an association arranged, more than it feels
earned. Therein lies the mystery that makes Satyaprem ki Katha, a cautious hike to a place of numbing clarity about the concept of consent.

There is plenty to like about the film. Aaryan, at least for the most part is charming as the goofy loser, looking for abstract meaning in life. He even gloats about getting fired from the job his father-in-law has practically handed him. Such is his commitment to doing absolutely nothing. The comedic bits are likeable, but also ultimately forgettable. Aaryan, though, is
convincing as the useless but also harmless boy next door. Advani pulls her weight through a difficult role that doesn’t quite unshackle her the way her film Guilty did. Considering the relatively cagey demands of the role that must also oscillate between the hallucinatory bits of maximized Bollywood and minimal expression, it’s a good performance. Gajraj Rao and Supriya Pathak are, well, effortless and adorable all at once.

The problems with this film directed by Sameer Vidwans, also range in the many. Firstly, for a film calculatedly headed towards a progressive message, there is plenty awry about its own moral compass. The men, almost all of them, repeatedly say the wrong things. Even in defying a problematic template, the film, unfortunately falls for its easy cues. And for all the grim social apparatus, the writing struggles to inject a sobering, unclassical narrative with the kind of fresh pathos that such a revision could have used. Did this film even have to be the massively staged ‘musical’, as it has been billed?

Then there is the Kartik Aaryan conundrum, an actor at ease with being innocently daft, but visibly overawed when tasked with personifying grief. A better actor could have maybe elevated material that, though it rarely explodes, is seldom without sparkle.

A film like Satyaprem Ki Katha must at least be admired for the structural bits it tries to rephrase for a cinematic tradition desperately trying to take that next, great leap in the space of love and romance. Here the hero’s pursuits are benign, unripe even. He isn’t surrounded by toxic enablers nor does he crowd the scenery – except for the unnecessary songs and
dances – through sheer, dumb bravado. He is instead, trying to win the woman over by also letting her have her space. So he can push her to undertake a conquest that otherwise daunts her. Sure, the shape and treatment of the film represents a man mansplaining his way to
heroism, but here at least, the archaic Bollywood heroine gets an arc to live through, a moment of strength that though guided, is her own to possess and project. “Apni ladai ka hero tumhe khud banna padega,” Satya says, urging Katha to become the first member of the village it will take to get her redemption of sorts. Satyaprem Ki Katha can’t quite lay the bricks for this village, but digs a hole wide enough to plant ideas and plans that would.