No Chip Off The Block Anil & Harsh Varrdhan Kapoor

Like Father, Like Son? The Kapoor Gentlemen, Set To Star Together In Thar, Beg To Differ, As Hello! Captures A Rich Family Bond With A Fascinating Cross-generational ‘pact’ Rather Than Gap. Here’s An Actor With A 39-year-old History In Mainstream Cinema, Watching His Son Straddle A Global Storytelling Platform Where Box Office Numbers Don’t Matter... So What Does?

- Sangeeta Waddhwani

It’s got violence, suspense, it’s a thriller… It’s got all the ingredients of a contemporary story — Anil Kapoor assures a ballroom full of media persons, who have been watching the trailer of Thar on loop. The line-up of personalities on stage is blue-chip enough — the always affable Anil Kapoor, his avant-garde son Harsh Vardhan Kapoor, director Raj Singh Chaudhary and actors Fatima Sana Shaikh, Satish Kaushik, Jitendra Joshi and Mukti Mohan.

Inspired by the ‘Westerns’ of Hollywood, Thar, a production by Anil Kapoor Film Company and Netflix, is the latest indie film to drop on the streaming platform. Daddy plays the cop, while sonny boy plays an antique dealer in whose village a series of gruesome deaths are unfolding.

Father and son have also worn the hat of producers, consuming an array of ‘Westerns’ during the lockdowns, to capture the mood and art direction and also the storytelling style of the genre. Each character in Thar comes with a patina of secrets, all playing out against the harsh, stark environment of the Thar desert, virtually a character by itself. All this is peppered with the use of largely unheard desert musical instruments mixed with folk music. Clearly a passion project.

AK & HVK: two cinematic eras in one family

They may be father and son, but stylistically, Anil Kapoor and Harsh Varrdhan stand on opposite ends of the showbiz ‘drama’ spectrum. Anil jokes that you’d never see him without professional makeup and a hair stylist, but at the event, he proudly announces how Harsh Varrdhan chose to forego both when playing Siddharth in Thar.