The Indian movie “Kapoor and Sons,” starring actors like “Rishi Kapoor” and “Sidharth Malhotra” is somewhat an imitation of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.” The movie is quite similar to the play. Just like Willy, Rajat Kapoor has two sons and one of the two is unemployed and had had a weak career. The family is shown to be poor in the play as well as in the movie. The father is shown to have an affair and the son discovers it. Willy’s and Rajat’s death also show that the movie is no different from the play written.
The sequence of the events is somewhat different. Willy (the father) has a relationship with a woman while he is young and it hurts Biff (the son) to the level that he puts in no effort to pass a subject and fails to graduate. It is because of this, that he remains unemployed for years and doesn’t get a good job. Also, he develops a habit to steal and is shown to hate his father, who gave his mother’s stockings to his mistress.
However, in the movie, Sidharth Kapoor(who plays the role of Biff) is shown to have discovered his father’s relationship with another woman much later. This affair has no role in spoiling Sidharth’s career. Also, the relationship between Linda and Willy, in the play, is quite smooth with Willy dominating the marriage. On the other hand, in the movie, the relationship between the parents in disturbed most of the time and the mother seems to have no sympathy towards the father. Whereas Linda has a soft corner towards her husband and sympathises with him as much as she can.
There is an Uncle Ben in the movie as well, just like the play, who is more established and successful than Willy. However, in the play, Uncle Ben is dead and in the movie uncle is still alive. Fawad Khan, who is a replica of “Happy” from the play, is presented to be a gay which doesn’t go with the play. Sidharth’s relationship with Alia is nowhere there in the book and Biff is shown to be single. Also, Rajat Kapoor, unlike Willy, is a man with no mental disorder. On the other hand, Willy is shown to be losing his mind and hallucinating all the time.
The scene at the end, where Rajat Kapoor(the father) drives off to death to get rid of the conflicts going on at his house, is same as in the play. However, the reason in the play is that he wants his family to get his insurance amount which he feels would be enough to establish Biff in his career. Unlike the movie, Willy isn’t shown tired of the conflicts or isn’t shown to be escaping the argument going on in the house. So Rajat Kapoor’s death is shown to be an unforeseen accident whereas Willy commits suicide to help his family financially.