In a staggeringly staged scene, the camera moves from capturing Amrita's and Vikram's conversation to Amrita looking at her maid (played by a stellar Geetika Vidya) while you continue to hear the husband trying to justify an act by ignoring his own privileges. Amrita sees herself in Sunita - quiet, subdued, compromised, and accepting the fate as it is rather than shutting up the man who is responsible for it. It's a powerful scene in many ways as Anubhav Sinha shows you the inception of ideology and what forms it can take if not dealt with at its origin.
'Thappad' (Meaning: Slap) is filled with such moments. Sinha and Mrunmayee Lagoo makes the audience an outsider in this mundane world and by keeping this distance (which is what was absent in a film that is a flagbearer of its rival), allows you to look within yourself to understand the integrated legacy of misogyny that the previous generations have entrusted on you to continue. However, when needed, they also highlight the issues that even liberals do not identify. Such a moment comes when Kumud Mishra's character realises that he wasn't the liberating husband he thought he used to be. The understanding that it is extremely hard for a suppressed, non-revolting individual to break an imagined order (a term borrowed from Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari) and therefore, requires a person they are dependent on to bail them out is beautifully established in the scene. 'Aapne bhi toh kabhi nahi poocha ki gaana kyu choddh diya' (translation - Even you did not care to ask why I left singing) is a question to Mishra's character about him being too consumed in his own thoughts that he never really bothered to understand that the wife, more than the freedom, wanted him to also give that push for the freedom periodically. It is easier to judge a society, probably more difficult to understand the roots but hard to identify your part in the problem and actually, it within oneself.
While Mulk had a Hindu standing up for a Muslim family; Article 15 had an upper-caste trying to comprehend the plight of the ignored yet tortured lower-caste; Thappad takes it even further by bringing everyone under the umbrella via 'just a slap' - a hard to comprehend statement for the patriarchy. Every character is questioned. Every character undergoes a change (barring a delightful Dia Mirza's) via that one slap and therefore, are made to question if their lives were as righteous as they thought it to be. Dia Mirza's character epitomizes an ideal world that people either seek answers from (Amu asking why she never married again) or raise questions on (Vikram enviously asking what she does for a living) since it is different from the world they are exposed to. In another scene, she says that she likes to believe that men are good and therefore, will ignore what Vikram has asked her to do. This is minimalistic writing at its best. She cannot accept an act (asking her to lie) or an ideology (unidimensional thought induced sweeping remarks) to enter her perfect reality.
On the contrary, Ram Kapoor's character is dystopian and sketched on the lines of a stereotypical man whose only loyalty lies to his profession and how to be the best at it even if it comes at the cost of morality. He is staged against Maya, who is another layered character and symbolises that the 'woman behind a successful man' is just a saying. In reality, it is the antonym that is practised. And then is the character of Sunita, a perpetually oppressed woman who finds happiness in the tiny windows of time that she gets, she acts as a wonderful comparison between the educated and the ignorant. All men are the same, she concludes after the episode and therefore, she should not be abusing her husband alone for a crime that a supposedly educated man commits as well passing off as his right. 'Are we really a society of literates?' asks Sinha through her. She gets a terrific conclusion right from putting down that extra money (an act that Ram Kapoor's character would not even think of doing) to questioning her husband to the best of her capacity and eventually, giving it back to the man who always thought he owned her.
Every character is a symbol in this film. There are characters like Ram Kapoor's or Manav Kaul's who will not even try to break the imagined order and will fail to understand why the world around them toppled (I can see a popular business analytics website going that way). Then there are characters like Shah's and Azmi's who places a tradition above morality despite them being the victims of the act. And this is where they are having their own battles and as usual, decide to persuade the more logical side. However, unlike the others, they are the first to welcome a change that they themselves would have loved to bring which brings me to Amrita. Amidst all the noise and aggression around, the character never tilts on the wrong side of the moral compass. It is not until the fake allegations that are made against her that you see her aggression (a realisation that the society would go to any length to keep the sexism intact). Even the metaphorical slap to everyone around her through that conversation with Azmi is such a thing of beauty. Unlike other characters, Amrita knows when it goes wrong. The first person she informs about her pregnancy is Vikram. There is no ego or even an acknowledgement of a rivalry. She knows what is right. She knows what she has to do. It's never dramatised from her end. What you see is extreme reactions from people around her showing a clear mindset that they lack.
This is a film that is not just cinematically correct (look at the scenes where Amu and Vikram are trying to have a conversation and Sinha uses a glass between the audience and the camera until the final court scene where you get a closeup shot of the two, indicating what a relationship actually is) but gives us a pathway to how the future should shape up. This is visionary, this is important and this is a film that won't leave me for long. For all the Manavs and Kapoors (just their characters), it will be hard to understand why this film is important but all I want to say to you is that your mind and your soul needs better representation.
'Thappad' (Meaning: Slap) is filled with such moments. Sinha and Mrunmayee Lagoo makes the audience an outsider in this mundane world and by keeping this distance (which is what was absent in a film that is a flagbearer of its rival), allows you to look within yourself to understand the integrated legacy of misogyny that the previous generations have entrusted on you to continue. However, when needed, they also highlight the issues that even liberals do not identify. Such a moment comes when Kumud Mishra's character realises that he wasn't the liberating husband he thought he used to be. The understanding that it is extremely hard for a suppressed, non-revolting individual to break an imagined order (a term borrowed from Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari) and therefore, requires a person they are dependent on to bail them out is beautifully established in the scene. 'Aapne bhi toh kabhi nahi poocha ki gaana kyu choddh diya' (translation - Even you did not care to ask why I left singing) is a question to Mishra's character about him being too consumed in his own thoughts that he never really bothered to understand that the wife, more than the freedom, wanted him to also give that push for the freedom periodically. It is easier to judge a society, probably more difficult to understand the roots but hard to identify your part in the problem and actually, it within oneself.
While Mulk had a Hindu standing up for a Muslim family; Article 15 had an upper-caste trying to comprehend the plight of the ignored yet tortured lower-caste; Thappad takes it even further by bringing everyone under the umbrella via 'just a slap' - a hard to comprehend statement for the patriarchy. Every character is questioned. Every character undergoes a change (barring a delightful Dia Mirza's) via that one slap and therefore, are made to question if their lives were as righteous as they thought it to be. Dia Mirza's character epitomizes an ideal world that people either seek answers from (Amu asking why she never married again) or raise questions on (Vikram enviously asking what she does for a living) since it is different from the world they are exposed to. In another scene, she says that she likes to believe that men are good and therefore, will ignore what Vikram has asked her to do. This is minimalistic writing at its best. She cannot accept an act (asking her to lie) or an ideology (unidimensional thought induced sweeping remarks) to enter her perfect reality.
On the contrary, Ram Kapoor's character is dystopian and sketched on the lines of a stereotypical man whose only loyalty lies to his profession and how to be the best at it even if it comes at the cost of morality. He is staged against Maya, who is another layered character and symbolises that the 'woman behind a successful man' is just a saying. In reality, it is the antonym that is practised. And then is the character of Sunita, a perpetually oppressed woman who finds happiness in the tiny windows of time that she gets, she acts as a wonderful comparison between the educated and the ignorant. All men are the same, she concludes after the episode and therefore, she should not be abusing her husband alone for a crime that a supposedly educated man commits as well passing off as his right. 'Are we really a society of literates?' asks Sinha through her. She gets a terrific conclusion right from putting down that extra money (an act that Ram Kapoor's character would not even think of doing) to questioning her husband to the best of her capacity and eventually, giving it back to the man who always thought he owned her.
Every character is a symbol in this film. There are characters like Ram Kapoor's or Manav Kaul's who will not even try to break the imagined order and will fail to understand why the world around them toppled (I can see a popular business analytics website going that way). Then there are characters like Shah's and Azmi's who places a tradition above morality despite them being the victims of the act. And this is where they are having their own battles and as usual, decide to persuade the more logical side. However, unlike the others, they are the first to welcome a change that they themselves would have loved to bring which brings me to Amrita. Amidst all the noise and aggression around, the character never tilts on the wrong side of the moral compass. It is not until the fake allegations that are made against her that you see her aggression (a realisation that the society would go to any length to keep the sexism intact). Even the metaphorical slap to everyone around her through that conversation with Azmi is such a thing of beauty. Unlike other characters, Amrita knows when it goes wrong. The first person she informs about her pregnancy is Vikram. There is no ego or even an acknowledgement of a rivalry. She knows what is right. She knows what she has to do. It's never dramatised from her end. What you see is extreme reactions from people around her showing a clear mindset that they lack.
This is a film that is not just cinematically correct (look at the scenes where Amu and Vikram are trying to have a conversation and Sinha uses a glass between the audience and the camera until the final court scene where you get a closeup shot of the two, indicating what a relationship actually is) but gives us a pathway to how the future should shape up. This is visionary, this is important and this is a film that won't leave me for long. For all the Manavs and Kapoors (just their characters), it will be hard to understand why this film is important but all I want to say to you is that your mind and your soul needs better representation.
