Netflix’s much-awaited thriller, Thar, recently launched on the streaming service and has been receiving rave reviews. The audience called the film a visual spectacle. The film entails all the usual elements of a Western Noir and is additionally supported by stunning scenic visuals of remote Rajasthan. Thar explores the story of an isolated desert village in Rajasthan set in the early eighties and follows the journey of Siddharth, an antique dealer as he enters the village which is jolted by a series of violent killings. The film is directed by Raj Singh Chaudhary and stars Anil Kapoor, Harshvarrdhan Kapoor, Satish Kaushik, Jitendra Joshi, Fatima Sana Shaikh, and Mukti Mohan in important roles.
Talking about his experience of shooting for Thar, Anil Kapoor who plays Surekha Singh, a local cop in the film mentioned, “The landscapes and locations in Thar were a character in itself. Every location is absolutely exquisite. Right from the start, the locations were in sync with the mood and story of the film. We shot in a 300-year-old village, which was built by Aurangzeb. It is needless to say that our art director and production designer did a beautiful job of designing and bringing the spirit of the film alive through the sets”
Talking about the locations and sets and how they added character to the film, Director Raj Singh Chaudhary further added, “There are two things, one is creating a visual world, which is real, and the other, a cinematic world. Cinema and reality are something that you need to balance out, and the locations that we shot in were imperative in creating the world of Thar. My intention was to show Rajasthan in a way that nobody has ever shown before while also making sure that it resonates with the Western Noir genre. The locations had to be gritty and hard-hitting, it had to be tough while being visually stunning, this is why I call it a ‘character’. We’ve put together each location keeping in mind various factors. For instance, even for a small shot of a jeep driving through a driveway, I have traveled to a location 45 minutes away, just to make sure that we don’t lose the character in any way.”