Spotlight, part of the Netflix anthology adapted from Satyajit Ray’s short stories , a popular actor, Vikram Arora, played by Harshvardhan Kapoor, is crippled with artistic insecurity despite his career being on an upswing. His professional anxieties get progressively worse when the hotel that he’s staying at is pretty much hijacked by a religious leader, Didi (Radhika Madan), who commands outsized influence on politicians, business leaders, film producers and the general populace. In the course of the film, Kapoor’s character must come to terms with the limitations of movie stardom and the realisation that between cinema and religion, two factions that enjoy a colossal hold over the Indian psyche, religion will always trump the former.
In this conversation with The Hindu Weekend, Vasan Bala and the cast of ‘Spotlight’, led by Harshvardhan Kapoor, Akansha Ranjan and Chandan Roy Sanyal, decode the layered drama about the magic and madness of movies.
