Kapoor And Sons (Hindi, 2016)

It is an absolute rarity to have a dysfunctional family drama as gripping as this one and kudos to the writing team of Shakun Batra & Ayesha Devitre Dhillon for it. All the characters of dysfunctional family – the father trying to workout the monthly bills, the mildly domineering mother who seeks the attention of her husband, the perfect elder son who is tired of being perfect&the second son who believes that his parents love his brother more than him and the grandfather – who is 90, who practices dying in different way and the girl who creates a rift between the brothers but who wishes she can have a family like them – are written with so many idiosyncrasies that the audience start associating with them, and even caring, even though they belong to an upper class whose other problems might not reflect the ordinary audience.

Ratna Pathak and Rajat Kapoor perfectly depict a couple who stay together by habit & not by love. Their daily fights sound so real, we see them having lived a long life of love that has now died. The elder brother played by Fawad Khan – brings the hidden sadness even in scenes where he is having a great time with anyone else. Alia Bhatt as the girl tangled between the brothers – but having her own problems in life isbrilliantin her space.

Rishi Kapoor as the granddad who fondly recalls his crush on ‘Mandakini’ and watches ‘bhajans’ on iPadis the cheery eccentric grand dad adding vibrancy to the proceedings. He brings out the yearning to see the family together. Siddarth Malhotra as Arjun is adequate, but one has to agree that his performance fades out a tad bit when compared to the others.

The other half of the writing i.e. the dialogues are excellent too. The casual conversation between the younger brother and his love interest in a cemetery, the conversations between the brothers about who the parents love more, the elder ‘perfect’ son going out with his brother’s love interest and talking about what’s gross – something sticking on your teeth or on your nose, the girl conveying her interest to the younger brother – all these conversations sound very casual, witty and spiced up with everyday humor make the characters life-like.In fact,no one will never forget the name & the characteristics of one ‘Boobly’!

After Piku, this is perhaps the next movie where the technical departments don’t stick out. The cinematographer Jeffery Bierman has underplayed without delving too much into nature-shots given the location of the tale. The editing too is very tight given that this is a conversation-driven drama. Shivkumar Panicker cuts between conversations smoothly given that there is more than one character trying to voice out his/her opinion at every possible instance.

Shakun Batra shows terrific control in his handling of the plethora of characters each of whom are able performers who will demand screen time.The way he seamlessly connects events to build up to the conclusion shows his conviction in narrating the tale.

Though there is enough drama in the movie to keep the audience engaged, resorting to editing multiple parallel dramatic situations front and back pushes the movie occasionally to melodramatic territory.This is evident in the party sequence where the Dadu has a namesake fight for no reason whatsoever with his old friends as the mother and father’s fight grows in the other room.

While Rishi Kapoor delights with his performance, his make up for the grandfather role seems extremely inconsistent& shabby for a high-budget film like this. It is very strange nobody questioned the output of his five hour long make-up sessions worth 2 crores in total!