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Thappad review: A stretched out but insightful film

Thappad’s strength is in its insightful writing and layered characters, however, at 140 minutes length, the film becomes stretched out

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Stars: 3

As the trailer suggested, Thappad revolves around – just one slap. The man in this story slaps a woman – his wife – at a house party after a major disappointment in his career. You go into the film waiting – with some nervousness irrespective of your gender – for the slap to happen. Writers Anubhav Sinha and Mrunmayee Lagoo Waikul make you wait for that moment. The film begins with a calm sequence revealing all the other women in the film with the men in their lives enjoying an orange Popsicle. This sequence alone shows that the following might not be what you expect to be.

Director Anubhav Sinha’s filmmaking career (RA.One, Cash, Tum Bin) saw a paradigm shift with his latest three films – Mulk dealt with religion, Article 15 with caste, and Thappad deals with domestic violence. It’s a man-woman film. But instead of doing the blame game, Thappad shows the male-centredness of this whole situation. However, it keeps flirting with the preachy zone, thus sometimes taking too long to make an obvious point.

The moment that you wait for nervously – the slap – is dealt cleverly without over sensationalizing it. Silence speaks more than words. This could easily have been a male bashing film with every line and emotion being spoon fed to the audience, provoking a rebellion. The good thing here is that the filmmaker just shows the situation. The viewer must be involved enough to understand what the film wants to say. And the filmmaker succeeds to a greater extent. Another recent example of such film is Meghna Gulzar’s Chhapaak.

The film has an ensemble cast in Ratna Pathak Shah, Kumud Mishra, Tanvi Azmi, Dia Mirza, Geetika Vidya among others who give this film the much needed layers. Domestic violence is spread across all classes and all the different walks of life are finely woven into each other. However, unfortunately, the lead of this film played by Taapsee Pannu somehow doesn’t look convincing in the role. Your heart goes out to her in the film’s most brilliant scene between her and Tanvi Azmi, but other than that she falls short quite often. Pavail Gulati whom you’re not supposed to like in this film does fine justice to his unlikable character.

Thappad could have been a more gripping at a less than two hour length. But maybe the society which has a lot to learn about how they go about the male-female dynamics in modern times, needs this 140 minutes long narrative. The superb second half will make you question a lot of things about yourself. It’s worth taking a closer look within yourself. That’s the point of this film.

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