Thappad
Year: 2020
Director: Anubhav Sinha
Cast: Taapsee Pannu, Pavail Gulati, Kumud Mishra, Ratna Pathak-Shah, Tanvee Azmi, Diya Mirza

What’s the plot?

A happily married couple hosts a house party, celebrating their upcoming migration to the UK. During the party, the drunk husband picks up a fight with his office colleague and things start going out of hand. The wife steps in to intervene but the enraged husband slaps her in front of everyone.

The aftermath is stunning. The wife decides to separate from the husband and even files for divorce. Lawyers, arguments, accusations…the things turn ugly. Can just one slap impact lives so deeply? And why? What will it all lead to?

Verdict

After beginning his Bollywood career with a mixed bag of commercially inclined movies (Tum Bin, Dus, Ra-One, Tathastu, Cash), the director Anubhav Sinha turned a new leaf two years ago. He became the voice of dissent against sociocultural inequality and discrimination. Mulk (2018) and Article 15 (2019) spoke against religious and caste discrimination respectively, and, Thappad (2020) trains its focus on gender inequality.

The film benefits from some good performances from Taapsee Pannu, Pavail Gulati, Kumud Mishra, Ram Kapoor, Ratna Pathak-Shah, Tanvee Azmi and Diya Mirza, but finally Thappad is writer-director Anubhav Sinha’s film. Compared to Mulk and Article 15, its predecessors in Sinha’s Discrimination-trilogy, it is a weaker film. It drags a lot, and is repetitive and preachy at times. Since it is an issue-based movie about a complex, deep-rooted social malady, it does manipulate characters, scenes and dialogues to represent certain aspects of the multi-layered problem.

Sinha once said in an interview: “I want people to start a conversation and ask a question after watching my film.” Thappad does succeed in that endeavor. It makes the viewers think and re-think about the slapping incident and its hidden social implications. It shows how the same event could be viewed in different lights through different eyes.

Showing different perspectives and thought-processes, Thappad makes you realize that the slap was not just an act of domestic violence but rather an expression of centuries-old patriarchic traditions that give men the social license to dominate, and directly or indirectly make the so-called fairer, weaker sex often sacrifice own dreams and aspirations.

Rather than giving a message or a solution, Thappad provokes thoughts, challenges traditional world-view, and shows mirror to the society. 

Rating

3 stars