Kapoor And Sons explored the suffocating depths of human relationships, unlike Gehraiyaan that remained on the surface

Gehraiyaan, starring Deepika Padukone, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Rajat Kapoor, Naseeruddin Shah, Ananya Panday and Dhairya Karwa promised to explain ‘the darker side of modern relationships’, however vague it sounded. However, given the cast, moody promos and the soulful songs, we were sold, a few caveats notwithstanding.

Gehraiyaan, however, failed to live up to the promise. After seeing the bottled-up frustrations and the careful character details in Kapoor & Sons, Gehraiyaan felt like a deception. Deepika deserves the credit for playing the battered Alisha, a woman who hasn’t been able to overcome the trauma of her past, and the guilt of not being there for her mother, who died by suicide as she felt suffocated in her own marriage. The scene of her mother’s death haunts Alisha intermittently, and she fears that she might end up the same way. The character details of Alisha are more elaborate than in any other person in the film, down to her habit of cropping out people in photos.

Her current relationship is almost pushing her off the edge. A yacht trip with her cousin Tia (Ananya) and her fiancée Zain(Siddhant) changes everything. She is helplessly drawn to Zain, enough for her to betray Tia and later berate him for not telling Tia the truth of their relationship. It isn’t a character that we would root for — she comes across as outrageously selfish, but we also see how Shakun establishes her as a person is unable to let go of traumatic experiences, and seeks comfort in seemingly easy escapes that turn out to be illusions. Alisha comes closest to displaying the grey shades, while everyone else is just insipid and flat. In the end, we all felt like Naseeruddin Shah, standing around awkwardly and wondering when we could go home.

The most frustrating disappointment is Siddhant Chaturvedi — the actor who had wowed us as the rapper in Gully Boy. He has none of the nuance that you would’ve expected from such a role. He just coolly relates his guilt about abandoning his mother, throws around blank dialogues about choices in life, and pursues Alisha while desperately trying to hold on to Tia for his own monetary gains. He appeared as a textbook toxic, manipulative and later even murderous man in an absurd twist that didn’t make sense in a relationship drama. There’s no deeper insight about why he does what he does. There’s no depth in his backstory, and you never empathise with him for even a second. The story of his mother’s abusive marriage that he relates nonchalantly to Alisha, almost seems like a cheap plot device and has no bearing on the story. In short, he just seemed like a terrible person without any character development.

His idea of poisoning Alisha almost seemed like a desperate attempt by the writers to infuse some interest in him. But that wasn’t the ‘greys’ we were looking for — the end to his story arc, which saw him falling off a boat during a scuffle with Alisha, was the most simplistic and absurd solution to his already bland plot arc. It would’ve been more intriguing had we seen him trying to wrestle with feelings for both the women in his life, while struggling to make some headway at work—rather than just a slew of expletives, to expound his frustration.

Ideally, the film should have made the viewers sympathise for the hapless Tia, who is unaware about her fiancé and cousin’s digressions and is manipulated horribly till the last minute. But Ananya could not dive into such a character. Oh there was Karan too, but we barely know much about him except that he wants to write a book and is unable to do so, and at the end he does. That’s about it. Naseeruddin Shah suddenly emerges as the hero of the story, as the man who has carried the weight of his secret for years — all explained in a matter of five minutes.

After watching Gehraiyaan, I returned to Kapoor & Sons for a while. The film took the deep dive in low self-esteem, crumbling marriages, extra-marital affairs, and the lies that parents tell their children, thinking that they’re protecting them. Even Alia Bhatt’s Tia, who wasn’t a part of the family, was relevant to the story and didn’t seem tacked on. Your sympathy with Ratna Pathak Shah’s Sunita frayed at points, when you realised that she had hurt her son inexplicably.

Her reaction to her ‘perfect’ son being a homosexual didn’t invite much sympathy either—and yet, she portrayed the modern, yet conservative woman with such finesse. Kapoor & Sons didn’t need constant rage of expletives to express anger or frustration; the emotions were communicated without the heavy use of flashbacks. Mental health is fragile; you didn’t need to be constantly told so. There were scenes that twisted the knife, and there were those that made you smile. Shakun had crafted the art of keeping the audience on their toes with the film, because you felt uneasy even in the peaceful moments, because you know the storm clouds were gathering. There’s a particular scene where the family has spent a pleasant evening dancing with relatives, and Ratna Pathak Shah asks Rajat Kapoor, “Can’t we be happy?” And he answers quietly, “We can try.” This scene is particularly haunting as the couple has just witnessed how simple happiness can be, but it remains just outside their grasp.

Fawad Khan brought out the inner turmoil of Rahul — a man burdened by the tag of being perfect, a dysfunctional relationship and the secret of his own relationship. The emotion of Kapoor & Sons is encapsulated in his one dialogue to Ratna Pathak Shah, “Nobody’s perfect here, everyone is a mess.” Sidharth Malhotra’s Arjun is struggling in life, and has been under the impression that his brother has betrayed him — only to realise that he was wronged by his mother. These stinging plotlines and twists were so much more gripping than the murderous turn that Siddhant’s character took in Gehraiyaan.

Kapoor & Sons showed the darkness in ourselves and the nightmare alleys that live inside our heads. Gehraiyaan, on the other hand, taught us to never trust our partners when they say that contractors are calling in the middle of the night.