Thappad Review

“Anubhav Sinha does it again- a brilliant film by building a world around the issue”

Cast: Tapsee Pannu, Pavail Gulati, Maya Sarao
Music: Anurag Saikia
Direction: Anubhav Sinha

Anubhav Sinha’s previous film ‘Article 15’ was against the caste based discrimination. In the review of that film I had written “The beauty of this film is how it creates a world on screen to talk about discrimination.” This holds true for this film too. Here the world is even better with better characters. Anubhav starts building the world right from the first He shows different women and their relationships. There is a couple who is recently engaged, a single mother and her daughter, a lawyer, a house maid and the respective mothers of the couple.

These characters make the world and also help to show that all women and men are flawed in some way. Amrita (Tapsee Pannu) gets slapped by her husband Vikram (Pavail Gulati) and this incident has some direct and indirect effect on other characters’ relationships. It’s tastefully done. Among the characters my favourite was Amrita’s father Sachin (wonderfully played by Kumud Mishra). He gets fever thinking about how his daughter is feeling or the way he calls her wife, everything is sweet about him. But then without his knowledge he has supressed his wife’s feelings. Everyone is flawed. The only person who isn’t flawed is the dead husband of Shivani (Dia Mirza).

The film talks about how tolerance is used as a way to supress women. Amrita who chose to be a home maker is happy to do the errands for her husband. We don’t even see her frown when he comments, “First learn how to make paratha, then you can learn driving car”. It’s because she wants to be the best home maker and this was taught by her mother to whom her mother taught. But this all changes when Vikram slaps him in a party. This physical violence makes her emotional tolerance go for a toss.

Vikram or his mother doesn’t talk properly to her about the incident. They are self-centered. It’s not the slap, but the following actions of them are what make it more than the physical violence. Tapsee is brilliant in conveying the emotions. The journey from being an happy home maker to becoming a confident independent women is beautifully portrayed by her. As said before how this incident affect other characters in this world makes this film great.

Verdict: Anubhav Sinha does it again- a brilliant film by building a world around the issue