The Sky is Pink: LFF Film Review
If you feel in the mood for a good cry then you should check out The Sky is Pink. I bawled my eyes out! No subtle tears, proper sobbing.
The film spans more than 25 years and charts the love story of the real-life Niren (Farhan Akhtar) and Aditi Chaudhary (Priyanka Chopra Jonas), particularly focusing on how their marriage was tested when their daughter Aisha (Zaira Wasim) was born with SCID (severe combined immunodeficiency) and later developed pulmonary fibrosis.
This sounds like a really bleak, hard-hitting film and while it tells a very sad and serious story, it is presented in a light, refreshing way thanks to a bubbly and fun voiceover from Aisha herself. This was a genius idea because you got to see her sweet and funny personality and this levity in the narration makes the dramatic turns in the movie even more moving.
It was also a good idea to focus on the parents’ relationship and its ups and downs and be a story about love and family, not just illness. Aisha’s illness is a big part of it and takes up most of the movie but there is a lot more to it and one standout scene for me is Aditi going round Niren’s home for the first time. It has the most wonderful music (there’s a lot of great music in general) and was choreographed like a music video! It has many many uplifting moments to balance out the sad.
Throughout the course of the film, we see their courtship in New Delhi, them moving to London so Aisha can have an operation, and the family of four – which also includes Ishaan (Rohit Suresh Saraf) – moving back to Delhi after 13 years. The narrative is not linear and jumps around all over the place so we know when Aisha is going to die right at the beginning. I didn’t mind this technique at the start but it got frustrating towards the end as the film was feeling too long by this point and it was distracting from the emotional climax. It does go a bit overboard in the sentimentality stakes towards the end but that didn’t bother me too much.
I haven’t seen Chopra Jonas act in anything besides the Baywatch movie and she’s actually really good as the mother hardened by the need to protect her child at all times. But the emotional centre of the movie and the ones that made me cry were Akhtar and Saraf. They were brilliant.
The Sky is Pink is a wonderful film that will make you feel all the emotions. I laughed, I smiled and then I cried A LOT. I highly recommend. Bring tissues!
In selected cinemas Friday 11th October