A rare movie review - Thappad

When I first saw the trailer of the movie Thappad, I was intrigued. Having seen the excellent Marriage Story recently, which too deals with the story of a marriage gone wrong and ending up in divorce litigation, I was quite sure that Bollywood will not be able to do justice to such a sensitive subject which needs nuance and balance instead of characteristic pandering to the base audience.

The movie released a few days back and it got highly favorable reviews. Heard reviewers say things like "probably the best movie I have watched in the last decade or so", "it's an eye-opener", "it's a story of every Indian family that teaches girls to compromise and allows boys to become entitled", "wonderful casting", "the leading man is not vilified", "if this doesn't get the best movie award, I'm starting my own awards", etc. Despite my lack of trust in Bollywood, the feminist in me gave in and I went and saw the movie.

I can now say that this is probably the most overrated movie of the decade.

(Caution: some spoilers ahead.)

The leading characters are a man and a woman who are married (theirs is an arranged marriage, we are told) and who live in an affluent neighborhood along with the man's mother.

The man is unidimensional - genial on the surface, kisses and wishes his mom, bows down to his in-laws; extremely inept, can't open a pouch of tea, let alone make a cup for himself, doesn't know how to operate a printer or his mother's glucose meter; is extremely picky, makes faces at and spits out the coffee his mother fixed for him; highly ambitious professionally, brings work home, spends late evenings working in his study with his colleague/subordinate, obsessive about a lucrative foreign posting that he goes ahead with alone even after falling out with his wife; highly entitled; not considerate to the house help, keeps screaming her name when she is not around; is sarcastic about strangers in traffic, when they happen to be women drivers, is jealous of his neighbor who happens to be a successful single mother; invites friends, families and colleagues to a house party without advanced notice to his wife; gets combative with his senior colleague on hearing that he is getting the promotion he was looking for but with riders; slaps his wife in a rage in the presence of tens of guests, doesn't apologize immediately or the next day or after a week or ever, expects her to be sympathetic and understand his disappointment that led to him to behave like that; keeps escalating the conflict at every step instead of seeking a resolution or compromise, when the wife asks for some time away from him at her parent's place, sends a legal notice claiming restitution of conjugal rights (WTF!), uses his rich family's influence and expensive lawyer to intimidate; is vengeful and seeks full custody of unborn child despite being in no position to care for it, as if he's Mrs. Doubtfire; is chauvinistic and keeps saying duds like "maa ko potha chahiye" repeatedly; tries to influence the neighbor and bribe the house help to side with him in the legal battle with his wife. You get it, he's basically a dick.

The leading lady on the other hand is the exact opposite - she is extremely good looking and personable; dances well and is also very good with children, so naturally gives dance lessons to neighbor's child; highly contented with her own life as a housewife; extremely adept with her household chores and sharp with IT skills - setting up the printer for the husband; is happy not just welcoming guests for a sudden house party, but also happy entertaining them with a song and dance performance; doesn't gossip or bitch about the neighbor even when someone else (who else, but the previously mentioned dick) is doing it around her; ignores any flaws in her husband's character; monitors her mother-in-law's blood sugar every day and cares for her even when estranged with her husband; doesn't complain why his husband's extended family comprising of his father, brother, and brother's wife doesn't take care of the sick mother, doesn't blame or fight with them even when things turn sour between the couple; still remains the first to respond to S.O.S. when the old mother falls woefully sick and continues to take daily care of her; doesn't respond to taunts like "log kya sochenge" whether they come from the husband or his mother; is super kind to her own father, mother, brother and his fiancee; would not take her lawyer's advice to go aggressive instead choosing to keep her own petition a one-liner without any ask; agrees to a divorce settlement without any give or takes, doesn't speak a harsh word to anyone - even till the end of the movie. Again, you are smart and surely you get it. She's basically the one to dislodge Snow White as the Queen's new object of envy by being the fairest of them all.

Well, if you are still unsure of whom to sympathize with when two such characters get in a conflict, the casting should help you make up your mind.

The husband, a supposedly rich, successful and entitled professional is played by an unknown entity making his debut appearance while the wife, a supposedly happy-to-be-in-the-shadows-team-player is played by a famous starlet taking the marquee position in the film's titles, appearing in all promotions and being the alpha in chat shows and interviews.

What about the supporting cast, you ask? A famous lawyer and expert on women's issues, played by a debutant. Her husband, a supposedly famous media personality and her Ramjethmalani-esque constitutional lawyer father-in-law, played by good, but relatively unknown actors. The rich extended family of previously mentioned dick, all played by relatively unknown actors. Snowwhitest's parents, of middle-class background, played by better known Ratna Pathak Shah and Kumud Mishra. Such fantastic actors, but misfits with single tone character sketches, capable of playing their parts in half-sleep. And then there's Diya Mirza playing the neigbour and aiming for Glacier White. When the wife-slapper man asks her for an inappropriate favor, she responds saying "I was married to a good man and I believe men are good, so will forget that you ever asked me this." Guess we now have no way of finding out if she was actually married to a good man or to a wife-beater and she's just believing him to be good.

In Thappad, if a relationship is working, it's because the woman is making compromises and the man has no role in it. How is this feminism? Is it not going to make it worse for women if they are expected to bear the entire burden of making a relationship work? Mrs. Bigshot Lawyer is shown to be in an extramarital affair, but lest you think that it could be the cause of her marriage failing, it is made immediately clear that it's a purely platonic relationship and she's just hanging around with a guy as she misses out talking to someone initimately and feels nostalgic about how her husband once used to make her feel. Whatever.

While the characters are black or white, the cinematography has arthouse pretensions. If the entire movie was going to be set indoors and follow a linear, straightforward narrative, why does it begin with 4 or 5 parallel narratives showing seemingly unrelated characters having an orange popsicle? Why orange popsicle, you ask? Why Banksy paints red balloons? Arthouse, duh! In Thappadland, the walls of bedrooms are painted Prussian Blue and the woman of the house lounges and dreams of living in a house with a blue door, all because blue is the man's favorite color! After Marriage Story, A seperation, Kramer vs Kramer, The War of the Roses, this is how far Bollywood has come in understanding and presenting the gender and relationship wars? I will take a Nikaah or Arth any day over Thappad because they had better music too.

This is in all probability the only negative review you have seen of this movie. Someone had to say it, so I am saying it - it's not a bad movie, just mediocre and not an iota worth the hype. .