Rajat Kapoor's Home Truths

Rajat Kapoor’s a fun guy. Avowed atheist. Chaplin acolyte. Pied Piper of parallel cinema specialising in a canon of thought-provoking Hindi films about subjects like empiricism, couple swinging, urban absurdity and mistaken identity. A cinephile’s dream, the man will wax effusive on Fellini just as well as The Substance and Park Chan-wook.

He started out directing shorts, then moved to acquiring a reputation as a master of securing crowdfunding for feature-length films. All while directing plays for stage. And that description doesn’t even begin to account for his chameleonic range as an actor—from mainstream films such as Dil Chahta Hai, Kapoor and Sons., even Drishyam, to appearing in his own films, like Ankhon Dekhi. Recently, Kapoor, ever the cultural prophet, played a hoarse-voiced shaman-doctor in the successful web series Khauf. He now stars in Saare Jahan Se Accha, the Netflix show headlined by Pratik Gandhi.

Excerpts from a chat with the actor-director:

Let’s talk about horror. In the past decade, the supernatural has been co-opted into cultural and political commentary. Your Khauf dealt with male violence; Dibakar Banerjee’s segment in Ghost Stories addressed state surveillance. In the West, from Get Out to Sinners, horror increasingly seems to be a vessel for social anxieties. Why do filmmakers now feel compelled to root horror in real-world issues rather than treat it purely as genre?

Horror can take many shapes, and like my brother once told me, the real horror about zombies is how it’s a metaphor for fascism. Recently, I directed Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros for a school, a play that I’ve known for a long time about how everybody’s turning into rhinoceroses, and the protagonist is resisting the lure even as the creatures appear beautiful, singing and dancing. So, horror does have the potential for allegorical references. That’s because horror is also about the darkness of the human mind. It becomes a metaphor for all of these feelings: anxieties, fears, death... I’ve myself been trying to write a horror film for a long time.

With Saare Jahan Se Accha now, you’ve done three successful shows on OTT, the other two being, Khauf and Lootere. What do you think really nails it on streaming?

I’m no expert on OTT but I can tell you that the audience that wants good cinema is still the same—it’s a very, very small percentage of people who watch stuff in this country. So, the fact that shows like Lootere or Khauf could be made, is, in itself, amazing— because platforms are more and more algorithm-driven now.

Nobody f***ing knows what works—you just pretend that you do. I’ve met five thousand producers in Bollywood, who claimed that they know. But nobody had a clue Saiyaara was going to be this big a hit. Now you can write articles about why it’s a big hit and what people want, but nobody knows. It has to do with the zeitgeist, and that changes every month. So, how are you going to make something for the next month, or after? It’s just stupid.

You must find algorithm-driven content and programming frustrating as a filmmaker…

My thing is that if you don’t know what people might want, you might as well do what you want. I’ve always worked with the idea that if it engages me, that means it’ll engage you. The algorithm is something now, but even 30 years ago, the industry worked with a similar idea—that if you take this star and this music director, shoot in Switzerland, it’ll work. Why? Because last year, it worked.

So, firstly, they don’t trust themselves, and secondly, they have nothing to say. I’m saying, a few days back, if you asked any actor in mainstream cinema, they would have said, ‘I want to do an Animal because only action films work’. Come Saiyaara, they will all want to do a love story, because, oh my god, love stories are working.

What’s the culture like at home? How’re your children disposed towards your work?

My daughter is a writer, the boy is just finishing graduation. Poor guys, they have to watch a lot of art films. My daughter still complains that I showed her The Birds (1963) by Hitchcock. Singin’ in the Rain (1952) was a big hit with them. They grew up travelling with the theatre troupe, so they’ve been raised in an environment of art. And my wife (Meenal Agarwal) is a production designer, so it was all about art and objects and colour and textures.

What’s the next most ambitious thing you are doing?

I want to write a sci-fi film. I would love to do a musical. I haven’t been able to crack either yet. But I have three scripts ready at the moment—I don’t know which one will get made first, but I hope to make all of them in the next 10 years. Apart from that, I’m always trying to raise money. A little bit of shooting, some interesting projects. A lot of theatre, travelling with the group.

You’re the original guru of crowdfunding films. You started off by writing and directing your own shorts after you graduated from Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). What do you make of democratisation of art on social media?

When, 20 years back, we went digital, the same thing happened— democratisation of cinema. And even then, I remember saying that everybody who has pen and paper can write. Why is everybody not a writer? So, because the means are there, maybe somebody who couldn’t afford it earlier can make a film now, which is great. But that is again, how many actual films like that have you seen? I can name two or three maybe. There was a Tamil film, Pebbles (2021), by PS Vinothraj that blew my mind. He didn’t go to film school and just learned by watching films. Or Pedro (2022), a debut film by Natesh Hegde. These people would have made films anyway. Let’s take theatre—what does it cost?

I don’t think we have enough rigour in art—we are too easily pleased with mediocrity. Everybody is hailed as a genius very early in life, and they don’t try anymore. It’s not just about picking up a phone and shooting a film. You can, but for that film to be a work of art, you need something more.

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