The film is fluidly acted and directed, stays rooted in societal dynamics and personalities, resists stylistic flourishes, unfolds as an observational urban satire, and thrives on the ‘cinema’ of chaos and conversation (bonus: people speaking over one another and cutting each other off mid-sentence). You can tell that the crew is composed of seasoned theater veterans. The spatial awareness is great, the energy is organic, and at no point does one pocket of the place feel isolated from the other. All of them seem to be present at all times, regardless of who the camera focuses on. For instance, when some of them gossip in the kitchen, it still feels like the other actors are performing outside — not resting or waiting for their own scenes. When there’s a private chat in a bedroom, there’s a sense that life is continuing beyond the space.
These are small but underrated touches that not enough chamber dramas wield. When there are so many people, screenwriters often struggle with exposition; all their names and equations with each other have to be conveyed through dialogue before the viewer gets invested. This film does a neat job of weaving it all in through both lived-in vibes and plot placement — the policeman asks pointed questions in one timeline, and a few outsiders in the group become the medium to delve into other identities. For once, the specifics don’t matter. As long as we vaguely know of the attendees and their degrees of separation — brother, father, wife, colleague, friends, caretaker, professors and their age-gap plus ones — the story doesn’t get sidetracked by the details. I also like that one of the newcomers is a psychiatrist (played by Kapoor himself) who doubles up as the ‘detective’. He is trained to be sharp and perceptive, so he makes educated guesses and operates as a vessel of information for the audience.
Unfortunately, a whodunnit is invariably defined by the climax. The twist. The big reveal. In that sense, Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa resorts to a corny genre gimmick. It’s like life suddenly collapses into fiction. But I believe it’s the execution that’s a bit off (especially parting exchanges like “What will save us, professor?” — “Beauty”), not the idea behind it. Without giving away too much, it’s safe to say that the twist is a satisfactory riff on generational abuse, repressed masculinity and the complicity of privilege. The obvious subtext is that everyone is responsible for Sohrab Handa’s fate: the people who nurture, empower, love, antagonise, indulge and befriend him. Nobody is beyond reproach, not least the upscale whims of an urban demographic that loves discussing the world they are responsible for corrupting.
