Making a perfect paratha is the ultimate test of a perfect wife in a certain kind of universe so when Taapsee Pannu’s Amrita learns to make it for herself, there is a certain victory there. Thappad is full of such empowering moments, turning tiny moments into gigantic symbols of everything that is wrong with a marriage–its lack of gender equality, the notion of the wife taking the mother’s place, and the idea that the woman has to learn “bardasht”. That she is the one who keeps the family together, that she cannot walk out of a marriage and home over something as seemingly trivial as a slap.
Anubhav Sinha has rediscovered his movie making mojo, making Mulk in 2018, Article 15 in 2019 and now Thappad, Exploring social faultlines across religion, caste and gender isn’t easy and sometimes Thappad does feel like a checklist–upper class lawyer (an outstandingly chic Maya Sarao) with her ambitious and high profile journalist husband, lower class domestic (a stunning Geetika Vidya Ohlyan, last seen in Soni) with her abusive husband, middle class woman (Taapsee) with her seemingly picture perfect marriage, her mother in law (Tanvi Azmi, always excellent) with her all too busy husband who plays golf in the morning, and bridge–or is it billiards?–in the evening.
A slap from her seemingly suave husband shakes Taapsee out of her all too perfect routine of throwing office parties, making tulsi tea every morning, checking her mother in law’s blood pressure and giving her neighbour’s daughter kathak lessons. And not a moment too soon. Then begins Taapsee’s fight to be heard and to be taken seriously. And then all the dirty laundry starts to be aired, which is just in time again for some nastiness about custody, alimony, and who said and did what. The father (Kumud Misra) is predictably a feminist with his daughter though not necessarily with his wife, the brother leans towards traditional masculinity but promises to do better, and his girlfriend justifiably throws fits and rolls her eyes every time she hears something objectionable, which is often.
There is some speechifying in the end about how a house isn’t a home without the woman in it, which rather defeats the purpose of the whole film, but yes, it does draw boundary lines about what is acceptable within a marriage. Taapsee Pannu is an exciting actor to watch and she brings her A game to the movie, and is not afraid to share the screen with other women who are equally good.