Thappad by Anubhav Sinha

With so much of positive reviews buzzing around, thought of watching it Wednesday night, it was both paisa and samai vasool. Review by Sriram Sundaram in FB; copying it, I cannot write better than this:

"Tapsee Pannu plays Amrita, an upper middle class housewife with a loving husband Vikram (Debutant Pavail Gulati is promising and humanizes his lead character) and an ailing mother in law (Tanvi Azmi, excellent as expected) who is estranged from her husband (Sushil Dahiya) and older son (Siddharth Karnik) due to property and comparability related issues. Amrita makes good lemongrass tea, keeps her home spick and span, takes good care of her MIL, supports her husband in his pursuit of career goals, is a good neighbor to the widowed Shivani (a luminous Dia Mirza) and dance teacher to her teenaged daughter. On her side of the family, she has a caring father (Kumud Mishra, first rate!) and a silly, loving mother (that wonderful Ratna Pathak Shah, why don't they cast her in all movies being made in Bollywood?), a younger brother (Shantanu Ghatak) and his fiancee (Naina Grewal) who works for a leading advocate.

All seems to be going well what with Vikram getting an opportunity to shift his base to the UK. He hosts a success party at home and in the midst of the celebrations, he comes to know that he is not getting what he was promised in the UK. He picks this up with his boss and it gets into a messy argument resulting in Vikram landing a slap on Amrita much to her own shock and of the friends and relatives who had gathered for the celebration.

Vikram justifies himself stating that he was drunk, tense and frustrated and that these are common in married life. Vikram's mother asks Amrita to forget and move on, Amrita's mother asks her not to bother too much and compromise on the happiness in her life, Amrita's brother thinks Vikram should be forgiven since it was absolutely not intentional. Only Amrita feels her self respect has been violated and she just cannot come to terms with the fact that she has been slapped by her husband.

She moves out to be with her parents and is welcomed with open arms only by her father. But when Vikram sends her a legal notice asking for restitution of conjugal rights, Amrita realizes that she has fallen out of love and she needs a divorce. She approaches high flying advocate Nethra (Maya Sarao, where was this fine actress hiding all these days?) who is amused at first but realizes Amrita's feelings and supports her petition. What happens next is what the story is all about.

For anyone reading the story-line, the immediate reaction will be whether a single slap is reason enough for filing for a divorce. That is where Anubhav Sinha and his co-writer Mrunmayee Lagoo spend a lot of time chronicling the reactions of Amrita and of those around her through a well rounded script and apt dialogues. Vikram doesn't think he needs to apologize, in fact, he continues speaking to Amrita as to how one should move on if there is no respect for self (purely speaking from his work perspective), the mother and the mother in law wax eloquent about how the divorce petition is likely to crumble Vikram and the reputation of the families, her own brother goes to the extent of disowning his fiancee who introduced Amrita to her lawyer boss but none of them even ask Amrita about how she felt and what she needs. She finds solace in her neighbour who reminisces about what a fine man her dead husband was and her father tells her matter of factly - listen to your heart and if your heart says you are doing the right thing, just do it. Right things do not always provide happy results.

The entire point that the movie is trying to make comes alive in the dialogue that Amrita has with her mother in law in the pre-climax where she says she has realized she was being loved and recognized for being Vikram's wife and not for being Amrita. It is a powerful scene that will probably send all the viewers on a self examination trip. Why is it that the Indian conditioning when it comes to marriages is so unfair to women? It is a question that needs to be asked, pondered upon and acted upon. In sending us into this trip of self examination, lies the victory of the writers.

This doesn't mean that Thappad is a preachy lesson on equality or feminism - it is a very well made commercial movie that smartly puts a question out to you while chronicling the life of its principal character. Thappad doesn't begin and end with Amrita either - it is about Sunita (a competent Geetika Vidya), the domestic help at Amrita's place who is a victim of domestic abuse at the hands of her husband, it is about Nethra whose husband dismisses her success as the result of the privilege she enjoys being the wife of a super successful media person (Manav Kaul who appears in precisely 3 scenes and exposes his wily character just too well) and the DIL of a retired justice, it is also about Amrita's mother whose genuine interest in singing was not allowed to be pursued by her mother for the sake of conjugal harmony and her otherwise supportive husband didn't have a clue of the same all these years.

Anubhav does well in bringing these subplots together and skillfully joining them with Amrita's own story of struggle. I was particularly impressed with the orange candy sequence in the beginning through which all the supporting characters were introduced. The repetitive images of the milk bottles, newspapers being thrown, lemongrass tea being made also serves to drive home the point relating to the mundane, thankless life of housewives all across the country. Anubhav's firm grip on the script and his deft direction and his ability to extract winning performances from each and every cast member - debutants to less known to veterans - stands the narrative in extremely good stead. Background score is minimal and unobtrusive and the handful of songs blend seamlessly with the proceedings. Cinematography is competent and in spite of the narrative unfolding largely within the confines of homes, the emotions are conveyed well with minimal lighting. Costumes and production design help in establishing the characters and their background without being on your face at any point in time.

While the performances are first rate, veterans Kumud Mishra, Ratna Pathak Shah and Tanvi Azmi deliver knockout performances as usual and stand out. There is also Ram Kapoor making a brief appearance as Vikram's advocate and putting up a stunning performance. However, it is Tapsee Pannu who is at the center of this narrative and she expresses anger, hurt, humiliation, disbelief and strength in equally good measure and accepts the emotional arc of the character submitting herself fully to the script in the process. This is easily her most accomplished performance till date and I wouldn't be surprised if she bags a few awards for this one.

At 140 odd minutes, Thappad is an extremely engaging, though provoking and eventually disturbing watch that makes you feel uncomfortable and ends you questioning yourself - that to me is the true power of art and cinema! It may not change the world but it will definitely set you thinking - As Amrutha says ‘ Respect and Happiness “ - two important things in life . This movie is a dedication to all those women who couldn’t stand up for themselves becoz of the social conditioning . For all those , who didn’t even know that that have the right to react. . Thank you for your review Sreeram Sundaram 😍!

At this juncture of Thappad's the movie released is a Thappad against disrespect, unhappiness and tolerance of injustice; as we have just had two other Thappad by way of Corona Virus and Delhi Riot.