Kapoor couple are together simply because they have been married for decades. Their children come to meet their granddad, one from the UK and the other from the USA, not out of love or emotions, because they have to - as a duty - karma.
One of the Kapoor sons says, 'Happy endings are found only in fiction'. But there is no happy ending in this fiction (aka movie), just a succinct moment of respite; may be to make us feel that all families will have the calmness in between.
The only person who is unashamed of his secret indulgences is the dying-old-Kapoor, may be because he is old and waiting to die. He is lewd and loud and unafraid of his past. If he were younger, probably he too would have behaved like his son.
The Kapoor (son of dying-old-Kapoor) wants to hide his infidelity. The wife wants to bury the giving away of the 'story-plot' from her not-so-favourite-son to her favourite-son. The favourite son wants to conceal his homosexuality from his mother. And the not-so-favourite son wants to live in his closet without opening up to anybody.
The movie is not about family love, trust, joy, affection or hope; it is about the pain, devastation and desolation of acceptance of the grief, disappointment, envy, resentment, betrayal and anger which perpetually occur in any family.
Tolstoy's famous quote reads, 'All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way'. The film seems to question this cliché. No family is 'happy' or 'unhappy', Families are not black and white. Many of the secrets are buried for good, some get revealed, tormenting for life. A 'not-so-happy' family is better than not having a family after all.
'Kapoor And Sons' is streaming on Netflix.
