Thar Movie Review — Sucharita Tyagi
Unflinching, unrelenting. It’s not perfect, but pretty great.
Very excited iss film ke baare mein aapse baat karne ke liye.
Hey y’all, my name is Sucharita, this is a movie review and today we’re talking about the latest Netflix release, ‘Thar’, written and directed by Raj Singh Chaudhary starring Fatima Sana Sheikh, Harshvarrdhan Kapoor, and Anil Kapoor in the lead roles.
Main filmon ke trailer aajkal nahi dekhti hoon, kyunki kaafi tarteebi se poori kahaani trailer mein bataa di jaati hai. So AFTER watching Thar, I went back in to watch the trailer and other promotional material, and dear viewer even if you’ve seen EVERYTHING around this movie, you’re not prepared.
Set in a particularly punishing arid part of Rajasthan’s desert land, you enter the film via a local policeman, Surekha Singh, seemingly lost in his thoughts which you can hear as a voice-over. A few months away from retirement, Surekha is contemplating if his life devoted to his work was a life well spent, perhaps hoping for one last exciting case, something to make him feel alive again. Enter a mysterious young stranger from out of town looking to hire people for his business.
Right around this time, a few local men begin to disappear or turn up dead. But the stranger isn’t the only mysterious presence, there’s a quietly simmering angry wife who’s capable of way more than she lets on. And then, the story unfolds.
What sets ‘Thar’ apart from a regular small-town murder mystery is the treatment, the film is designed like a spaghetti western. There even are multiple references to OP desi cowboy western ‘Sholay’. There’s also a local watering hole/slash dhaba, a neutral land with unspoken rules, bass aise woh flapping darwaazey nahi hain usmein front mein.
The movie’s technical departments go above and beyond to ensure Raj Singh Chaudhary’s vision is realized, most importantly in the cinematography and music.
DOP Shreya Dev Dubey uses the vast expanse of this aggressively banjar, bleak topography to create a sense of loneliness. Heat emanates from her frames, all of which are as sparse as the film’s setting. Thar is set in a land where every single item, every drop of water, and morsel of food is counted, and provided on a requirement basis.
Shreya Dubey’s camera honors and enhances that emptiness, filling the vacant spaces with thorny shrubs and giant jagged boulders, useless and mocking. Khud toh she’s fantastic, lekin additional DOP bhi toh dekho kaun hain Jay Ozha and Swapnil Sonawane, how can the film look anything less than incredible?
Ajay Jayanthi’s music is one of the shining jewels of ‘Thar’. Spaghetti westerns ki ek particular sound hoti hai, which RD Burman had captured like lightning in a bottle and created the various tunes of ‘Sholay’.
Not to compare newcomer Ajay Jayanthi to RD Burman, and I'm no music critic, but I know I can safely say ‘Thar’s’ soundtrack is nothing short of genius, and Ajay, an indie musician from Mumbai is a very exciting young talent. Folk Rajasthani gaane jiss tarah garam hawaa ko cheer kar nikalte hain na, it's magnificent how he’s used them.
I’d strongly suggest ki iss se pehle Netflix automatically agli movie start kar de, when ‘Thar’ fades to black, click on and watch the end credits merey kehne par and watch out for these names, make a little game out of it.
Production designer — Wasiq khan
Art director- Disha Dey
Colorist — Siddharth Meer
Costume — Priyanka Agarwal, who incidentally is married to music composer Ajay Jayanthi.
Speaking of incidental, there is a cross-border drug smuggling sub-plot in ‘Thar’, which feels more weighty and peripheral than red-herring-y. It's always fun to watch Rahul Singh be a mean Gunda type on screen but his character mostly existed to give Anil Kapoor his crouching-behind-jeep-shooting-a-bad-guys moment, I felt.
Instrumental in making this film actually happen and seeing the light of day, is actor Harshvarrdhan Kapoor, who plays Siddharth, the stranger from shehar, with secrets of his own. It's not an easy role to play considering the amount of visceral violence the character is surrounded by.
Haan, I told you na trailer aur baaki SAB KUCH bhi dekh kar, aap bilkul ready nahi ho for the rough brutality in this film, in many artfully lit close-up shots.
Harshvarrdhan’s conviction in putting his might behind this movie is visible in his performance, I assume he’s given it all he has to offer. Mouthing lines written by Anurag Kashyap, this character personifies ‘Thar’, an unpredictable, dark place, devoid of sympathy or emotion, angry and unforgiving. It's all very impressive.
Anil Kapoor is the audience’s entry into the movie and our eyes for a while, the cop trying to piece things together with an energy that’s in between fully enthusiastic and half-hearted. Surekha Singh is an old lion who knows these lands, knows the behavior of his prey, wondering if he needs to bother learning anyone’s new ways, considering his active hunting days are almost over, pondering all this as he solemnly sews his juraab before going to bed. Just a superb Anil Kapoor performance.
Thar thriller hai, toh it attempts to keep its audience guessing, never fully showing its hand. Fatima Sana Sheikh bhi housewife hai ek, lekin unki shakal par dikhta hai har moment mein ki HAI yeh shaani, pata chalega.
Perfect casting by Gautam Kishanchandani, Fatima’s just the right balance between adorable and sexy, who can wield a belan and a gun in the same film, and it feels perfectly acceptable. Also shout out to Mukti Mohan, who knew that the performer I only knew as a gifted dancer also has SERIOUS acting chops, fully surprised.
Par haan, coming back to the “keeps the audience guessing bit”, idhar the film lost me when it continued to try too hard. A little over an hour in, I was barely any wiser, kaun murderer hai aur kisi bhi major character ki conviction kya hai, to begin attempting to solve the puzzle as a viewer, there just weren’t enough breadcrumbs.
The violence begins to weigh heavy and when the film does end, there isn’t enough satisfaction to relish, the reveal doesn’t feel like enough of a pay-off for the kind of attention the story had asked of you throughout. A conveniently placed notebook with plans neatly written down plus a few unnecessarily borderline boorish sex scenes could also have been envisioned better.
Overall ‘Thar’ is a pretty great watch, aur mainey toh blackout curtain-shurtain lagaa kar, noise-canceling headphones par dekhi mainey toh, too fun.
So, on a scale of 1 to 10……yes I’m bringing this back……on a scale of 1 to 10, ‘Thar’ is……1 hell-of-an attempt to do something new. If you can handle the violence, watch the film on Netflix. Subscribe to my channel, this week Dr. Strange bhi toh hai!
