Few movies manage to move you, and make you think and introspect. Fewer movies manage to show a mirror to society, and Thappad ticks both the boxes. This movie touched my ‘rooh’.
Let me first give a disclaimer: I am not doing a review of the movie, I don’t know that much about movies, there are far more knowledgeable people to do that.
Thappad ‘shook’ me, as the kids say these days. It’s such a beautifully made movie, and has characters which everyone will relate to. When you see the trailer, many dismissed it, saying, ‘What is this, it’s just a slap, how can someone give divorce for a slap’, well, I have news for you, it’s so much more than that.
While the movie focuses on Taapsee’s character, it also shows you the stories of different women, and their life struggles. While Taapsee is shaken after one single slap, her maid gets beaten up by her husband daily. It’s funny that Amu (Taapsee) doesn’t flinch when her maid narrates stories of her getting beaten up daily.
That slap basically awakens Amu to everything that she has been putting up with, because, that’s what ‘women’ do, and that’s what her mother and mother in law teach her. When she decides to file for a divorce, even her lawyer, a privileged educated woman in a bad marriage, advises her to adjust. Her divorce wakes up the lawyer also to the realities of her marriage and makes her realise that she need not put up with her misogynistic husband, that she too can be happy.
I just loved Amu’s father, played by the brilliant Kumud Mishra, and her mother, the indomitable Ratna Pathak Shah. Every girl will relate to Kumud’s characterisation, you will all see a reflection of your father in him. He is the only one who totally supports his daughter’s decision from the beginning. But in a beautiful twist, they show, that he too isn’t perfect. He too never asked his wife about her dreams, and assumed that she was happy in domesticity.
In one of the best scenes of the movie, in which Amu speaks to her mother in law ( Tanvi Azmi), she confronts her for not supporting Amu when she was slapped. She says I was just your daughter in law all this while, wasn’t I, nothing more than your son’s wife, if you would have loved me as a person, you would have come and supported me. The mother in law and mother, and other people, tell Amu that you have to tolerate, you have to adjust.
This is what most women are told right? You must give in, learn to adjust, that’s how life is, and it’s all about give and take. But why aren’t men told the same thing? Why is it always the woman that must give in, always? So much so that she loses who she is. That’s what the movie really focuses on, in a beautiful way.
Instead of giving her son 1 slap and asking him to apologise, the mother in law asks Amu to come back to the party, because, ‘Log Kya Kahenge’.
Of course, there are men who are good, and women who are bad. It’s basically the intrinsic patriarchal notions that most girls and boys are raised with. We live with these notions throughout life and pass it on to the future generations. Like in the movie, both Amu’s mother and mother in law had dreams, but they put them on hold, and changed their entire lives to suit their husband and children. At the end of the day, as Amu says, we all want just some respect, and happiness.
As a woman, and a married one at that, the scene where Amu is slapped, gave me goosebumps. It left me dumbstruck. What would you do, if your husband, in front of his boss, family and friends, slapped you? The same husband who has become your entire life, who you decided to become a housewife for, with whom you have dreamt of a future, for whom you are ready to move to another country. For him, you are just a person who he can take out his work frustration on. I was a little disappointed with the characterisation of the husband, I wish we could have seen his emotions and thoughts a bit more. We just see a different side to him at the end.
The scenes of self-discovery of the lawyer, maid are beautifully shot. While many of us fight to work, all this maid wants to do, is stay at home and take care of her house. The scene in which she hits her husband is cathartic, to say the least.
But the last scene, after they get the divorce, will bring a tear to your eye. Whatever it be, separating after a marriage is not easy, and you might find yourself wishing that it didn’t happen. After Rishi Kapoor’s death, there was a lot of talk about how he was an abusive husband to Neetu. While I don’t believe in talking ill about people after their death, my friend put out a very relevant line. She said, in India, most marriages only end in death. While it may seem comfortable to adjust and ‘tolerate’ your spouse, the fact is that divorces are a messy and emotionally draining affair. But, no person, be it woman or man, must put up with a toxic relationship, or violence. No means No.
I hope this movie makes people teach their children correct lessons, that everyone deserves respect and happiness.
Having grown up in a progressive household, I saw my thatha and paati discuss finance together, and my mother and father too. I always assumed that women usually handle finance in the house, but growing up made me realise the harsh realities of this world. Even in this lockdown, instead of sharing domestic duties, cases of domestic violence have gone up.
I must add here, that I felt sadistic glee when Amu’s husband (Pavail Gulati) wants to make chai but didn’t know where the tea leaves are.
I am lucky to be married to a man who has been taught well by his mother. I hope all mothers raise their sons like she did.
My friend shared a beautiful quote after reading my article, which I would like to end with,
‘Never speak of marriage as an achievement. Find ways to make clear to her that marriage is not an achievement, nor s to what she would aspire to. A marriage can be happy or unhappy, but it is not an achievement. We condition girls to aspire to marriage, and so there is already a terrible imbalance at the start. The girls will grow up to be women preoccupied with marriage. The boys will not. The women marry those men. The relationship is automatically uneven because the institution matters more to one than the other,” from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s book.
Mum-Bhai 