I admit, I haven’t really been a fan of Fawad Khan ever since he gave up on EP. For the same reason, I never took Humsafar and Zindagi Gulzar Hai very seriously - two of his most popular drama serials. By extension of my lack of appreciation for Mr. Khan, I dismissed his performance in his debut Bollywood movie Khoobsurat as a reproduction of his roles in Humsafar and Zindagi Gulzar Hai (which, in my defence, was not an entirely wrong supposition). And none of this changed on March 19 this year when I watched Kapoor & Sons (I still stick to my opinions on the previously mentioned productions, since a remarkable performance at a later date undoes not previous unremarkable ones).
The film stars Sidharth Malhotra (as Arjun Kapoor) and Fawad Khan (as Rahul Kapoor) in lead roles opposite (well, not quite…) Alia Bhatt (as Tia Malik). The two male leads play brothers and sons of a dysfunctional family headed by a critical yet somewhat irrelevant father, Harsh (Rajat Kapoor), a volatile mother, Sunita (Ratna Pathak) and a jovial grandfather, Dadu (Rishi Kapoor). The two brothers live abroad, with the younger, Arjun, living in the US, doing part time jobs whilst trying to establish himself as a novelist, and the elder, Rahul, living in England, as an established novelist. The two are called back home to India when their grandfather suffers a heart attack.
Kapoor & Sons is a family drama at its best
The Kapoor household is the picture of a standard, modern, middle class home - a modern South Asian middle class home, to be specific - with lots of bickering, parental criticism, sibling rivalries, and favourite children, all of it painted with the brush of humour. Kapoor & Sons, then, is a family drama at its best.
But Bollywood has produced so many family dramas in the past - the Karan Johars and Sooraj Barjatyas of Bollywood have literally lived off of this genre - so what is it that sets Kapoor & Sons apart from the crowd? One word: realism.
Alia Bhatt
The foremost credit for the uniqueness of Kapoor & Sons goes undeniably to writers Shakun Batra and Ayesha Devitre Dhillon who have produced a story that is painfully realistic in most of its aspects. No, there are no adopted or illegitimate children in this family drama, nor are there any massive mansions. The Kapoor family has issues that a majority of South Asian families can relate to, not just the exceptions. Furthermore, the dialogue put together by the two scriptwriters also serves the purpose of making the film as realistic as possible, since it is natural enough to not have been a movie’s script, at all, but a regular family’s everyday conversation.
A very close second in the line of commendable characteristics of Kapoor & Sons is the performance of the actors, without which the film could have fallen flat on its face. As is the case with the script, the actors’ acting comes across as effortlessly natural, with very few lapses - an ingredient that was a must in making a film like Kapoor & Sons a hit.
Critics have praised Fawad Khan as the star of the film and I would like to jump onto the bandwagon
Most critics have been praising Fawad Khan as the star of the film and this time around I, too, would like to jump onto the bandwagon: much wholehearted applause for his performance for the first time since the release of Humesha (no link with Humsafar, no, please). Fawad Khan plays the elder, responsible and favoured child of his parents, absolutely perfectly. His is a very complex character - the son who holds the family together when it is ready to fall apart, who is considered as the “perfect beta” (perfect son) by the parents but who finally does come out with his presumed “flaws”. At each and every juncture of the story, Fawad successfully displays the emotions truly felt by his character (including the time when he is kissed by Alia Bhatt’s character, Tia, and is not aroused).
The second most appreciable acting performance of the film was that of Ratna Pathak, who plays the jealous wife Sunita’s role to perfection. Her character’s constant nagging and bickering with her husband is extremely believable - especially when she furiously empties out a jar of cookies onto her husband in front of a garden full of guests. Hers was clearly the stronger performance of the two parents, possible because her character was more assertive to begin with.
Sidharth Malhotra and Alia Bhatt have a usual day at the office with this film, with Bhatt playing the happy-go-lucky girl, who is ‘one of the guys’ and has a nice sense of humour, for the tenth time or so in her short career. Malhotra’s delivery of certain dialogues - especially the comic ones - was good, as the timing and manner of his lines’ delivery was essential to the film’s humorous element, but the angst? Let’s just say Sidharth Malhotra couldn’t pull off the frustration of the younger, neglected, and put-down son to perfection.
Rishi Kapoor as the naughty and comical 90-year-old deserves a special mention - not entirely because of his acting prowess, but for bringing life to the film. Kapoor’s Dadu is always the centre of all the fun, even when he is in the hospital, and has the funniest lines of the lot, which he makes even funnier with the quality of his comic timing and delivery. The other Kapoor of the film, Rajat Kapoor, has a unique performance as the underachieving father who constantly criticises the younger son and has a very unstable relationship with his wife. This is because it was good enough to make his character perhaps the least significant of all played in the film - wherein, I suppose, lies his ultimate success. It isn’t always the bold and noticeable acting performance that is the best. At times good acting lies in being as invisible as is necessary for the character you are playing.
Lastly, and never the least, comes the direction. Anyone who watched Kapoor & Sons would undoubtedly have noticed that it felt more like a reality TV show than a motion picture. Indeed, the movie had the feel of a home video, as if the camera had been lying around and had happened to record the happenings inside the Kapoor home spontaneously. The choice of the director to showcase his film on the reality TV format was a masterstroke, as it perfected that natural, real look of the film upon which its entire structure stands.
Here’s a pat on the back for the entire team of Kapoor & Sons - those were 132 minutes of my life well spent.
