He’s not deep, he’s just damaged

REVIEW: What Saiyaara gets wrong about masculinity, rage, and the fantasy of fixing broken men

There’s a certain kind of man we’ve seen over and over again in pop culture, across languages and industries. He’s angry, volatile, emotionally unavailable, often violent. He sulks, drinks, lashes out — and somewhere beneath the mess, we’re told, there’s something beautiful; that he’s just one heartbreak away from redemption, and so, that makes him worth saving.

The packaging varies — guitar-strumming musician, misunderstood artist, violent lover, angry dropout with dimples — but the promise is the same: That damage is depth. Saiyaara, a Bollywood blockbuster currently dominating Indian charts and Instagram reels, is just the latest example.¹ It’s doing unbelievably well … it’s broken box office records and pictures of the debut couple are dotting everyone’s timeline. For the first time in a while, a Hindi film has managed to grab the attention of a generation that’s half-scrolling, half-watching, and somehow still craving something real. It’s trending, it’s meme-ing and some of that is down to the machinery behind it: star kid Ahaan Pandey’s² debut was never going to fly under the radar. Add Mohit Suri (of Aashiqui 2 and Ek Villain fame) as director and of course expectations were high.

I’m not saying all the attention is hype — the songs are genuinely good, the visuals work, and the female lead (Aneet Padda) is excellent. Ahaan himself is promising, although I’m not sure how much of that is talent and how much is the fact that the bar has been set so low by Bollywood debutants of the last few years.

And yet, the frustration begins almost immediately, because this is still the same film we’ve seen a dozen times before: a boy who only knows how to express himself through rage — fighting, shouting, sulking, breaking things — until a girl enters his life and softens the edges. The whole arc hinges on his transformation and her role is only to enable it. It’s not just that she’s written as more emotionally grounded, it’s that she’s barely allowed anything else.

Even when they’re at parties, he’s drunk, cigarette in hand, surrounded by boys throwing alcohol around. She’s there too — smiling and observing from a distance — as though watching chaos is enough to count as participation (after all, “good girls” don’t party … or even know how to use a lighter, as one scene insists). When she creates, she does so calmly and poetically; when he emotes, it’s violent. She listens and he explodes. It’s overdone.

There is one scene, though, that adds a layer (or at least tries to). After they sleep together, there’s a moment where he opens up. They’re lying in bed and he shares about his childhood. For a second, you think: finally … this is the first time he’s vulnerable and maybe there’s something accurate about the fact that men often find it easier to open up post-sex.

That’s the one part of the film that feels emotionally aware and still I’m torn, because it’s not clear whether that choice was deliberate or just a plot device to show a steamy scene. Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that the broader structure of the film is built around an age-old template: damaged boy, healing girl, love as emotional rehab.

I brought this up with a few of my female friends, and they put it better than I ever could. One said, “there are very few men who are interested in a woman’s entire universe.” Another added, “there is this expectation that we shape ourselves around a man’s needs.” So in a world where women are taught that taking up too much space might mean being left out of the narrative altogether, it’s no surprise that stories like Saiyaara continue to be written. And the girl becomes desirable because she’s quiet, watchful, and malleable; she fits the story better than she fits herself.

And while that’s a sad reality — one I completely empathize with and know needs to be dismantled — I also think there’s something to be said about what this does to the boys watching. What message does a film like this send them? That if you scream loudly enough, someone will eventually come soothe you. That you don’t have to work through your trauma, or harness your demons, because a beautiful girl will come along and do that labour for you. That your anger is passion, your violence is depth, your sulking is sensitivity. And the worst part? Watching audiences, women especially, swoon not just over the actor, but the character. This character. What are we being told? That this is masculinity, one where breaking things is seen as romantic, shoving people as artistic, and lashing out as somehow proof that you care.

What confuses me is how many people — especially from a generation that talks about emotional fluency, vulnerability, and boundaries — still fall for this trope. I’m sorry to break it but Saiyaara doesn’t offer a healthy relationship: it offers the fantasy of being the one who fixes someone else.

Sure, he yearns for her and chases after her in the second half. But what I struggle with is understanding what draws her to him in the first place. Right from the start, she’s written as this almost impossibly supportive figure, delivering lines about how he needs to chase his dreams and reach the stars, even before we’ve seen any proof that he’s capable of doing either.

Let’s be honest, all we’ve seen from him is beating up her boss during their first meeting, reading her private journal without permission, making decisions on her behalf, pushing people around, and storming through every scene like a man-child cosplaying as a tortured genius. There’s no real backstory to justify the rage; no emotional trauma that warrants empathy, to the extent that you can’t help but admit the overwhelming assumption was that being “broken” is enough to be interesting.

Thank god he has a pretty face … otherwise, he’d be behind bars. There’s no real foundation to her devotion, just the tired idea that a woman’s love is unconditional and always a few steps ahead of the man she’s meant to save.

Maybe that’s what Gen Z needs right now — maybe it’s meant to be raw and romantic and intense. But to me, it just feels tired. There’s no real interiority, no effort to show who these people are.

I don’t know … maybe I’m overthinking it. Maybe Saiyaara is this generation’s Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna or Aashiqui 2 or Veer-Zaara or The Notebook, all of which have their own issues but can be enjoyed nonetheless. It’s a good film when consumed in parts: a song here, a line there, a reel-worthy stare from the leads.

And before it seems like I have a vendetta against this particular film, let me be clear: This isn’t just a Saiyaara problem, it’s an everywhere problem. Because this idea — that emotional damage is desirable, and that love means fixing someone — has been baked into pop culture across languages and generations. Whether it’s Hollywood’s brooding rockstars or Bollywood’s broken boys, we keep selling men the fantasy that they’ll be loved in spite of their behaviour, and women the fantasy that they’ll be loved because of their patience.

And society pays the price for that, not just in how we date but in how we show up (or fail to) in our real relationships. Women are taught to shrink themselves into emotional caretakers, to romanticize neglect, to wait for the boy to become a man. And men are also failed by this script. They’re told that emotional expression must be explosive, that softness is the woman’s job, and that they don’t need to learn how to communicate as long as they can suffer handsomely. It creates intimacy that’s one-sided and performative and leaves both people feeling unseen.

I wish we told different stories. I wish we wrote men who knew how to listen and women who didn’t have to shrink. I wish we showed relationships that weren’t rescue missions. And I wish we’d stop pretending that emotional depth is just synonymous with emotional damage, and that love means healing someone who doesn’t know how to speak unless they’re shouting.

Maybe such a story wouldn’t trend as easily. But maybe, just maybe, that would leave us with something more than an aesthetically shattered piano and a love song.

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1. Apologies in advance to readers who loved Saiyaara … something tells me that my hot take on a moody male lead is likelier to get me cancelled than any of my thoughts on geopolitics.

2. Chunky’s nephew, Ananya’s cousin, Alanna’s brother, Chikki’s son (who happens to be best buddies with Shah Rukh Khan), and yet another addition to the ever-expanding Panday Cinematic Universe.