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Johnson Thomas
The ‘SLAP’ that went awry
Film: Thappad
Cast: Tapsee Pannu, Pavail Glati, Ratna Pathak Shah, Kumud Mishra, Manav Kaul, Naila Grewal, Tanvi Azmi, Ram Kapoor, Maya Sarao, Dia Mirza
Director: Anubhav Sinha
Rating: * * ½
Runtime: 141 mins
Anubhav Sinha’s cause happy film is not about Domestic violence or abuse, it’s merely about taking a stand on issues in a marriage that allow one party to be dominant over the other. It’s also about a woman’s right to prevent any form of violence on her person – even if it be inadvertent. Probably, this one is going to be a hard nut to crack for the predominantly patriarchally inclined men and women from the Indian audience.
Presented as a caution against physical violence in marriage along with some choice pyrrhic dialogues to support that leitmotif, the film takes a clear-cut stand but the viewers might not be as enamoured of the flag wagging tale as the strident feminists and gender equality arm-chair activists and critics who want to showcase themselves as being politically correct. In Sinha’s film, the protagonist Amrita ( Tapsee Pannu) who hitherto had been a home and hearth persona suddenly goes stridently feminist in her approach to a marital infarction. The script fails to justify that implausible transformation and even with the punch-wielding dialogues forcefully championing that cause, it fails to make sense.
Since the act comes after a convincing pattern of domestic bliss with Amrita willingly embroiling herself in home affairs while her fiercely ambitious husband Vikram (Pavail Gulati) pursues his breadwinning endeavour – the entire construct of an abused wife deciding against continuing her marriage despite the overwhelming social pressure to forgive and forget seem totally contrived and illogical. It not only trivialises marriage as an institution but also paints the protagonist as a wilful, unforgiving partner whose sense of outrage at being publicly demeaned, stems from her own lack of conviction about her own needs and her insecurities than any serious psychological damage from the act itself. Domestic violence is a behaviour pattern executed over time and this Anubhav Sinha film tries to make a stress-fuelled, out-of-control ‘thappad’ into a marriage shattering edict. Tapsee is sincere but to believe in her latter half transition is to wear blinkers on the very reasoning, gender equation and personalities involved in a marriage. The film has quite a few women doing the dutiful, assuaging, platitudinal diplomacy bit and some being contrary too - but Amrita is not convinced …but then neither are we!
Johnsont307@gmail.com
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