Hindi, Amazon prime 7.2 /10 IMDB, Directed by Anubhav Sinha
A strong content, told from a weak person’s perspective. Somewhere the powerful message fails to touch the audience, the way it ought to.
The movie starts with Amrita, pampering her husband in his everyday involuntary chores, right from waking him up with a drink as the alarm goes off, to reminding him to carry his wallet to work. She literally is like a mom spoiling her child. She is in fact celebrating her housewife’s role thinking, it translates as – ‘Service to the husband’.
She is so hung up on the daughter -in-law’s role, that she doesn’t realize that she neglected her passion, and didn’t bother to think of having a career. People in her new house don’t think she need either of those as its not on the requirement list of a daughter in-law of a wealthy household. But they wouldn’t have stopped her if she had the drive in herself to pursue her passion or to find a career for herself. That’s a worry isn’t it. You can’t blame anybody other than Amrita.
For a split second, I wonder if the movie was set in the 1980’s or 90’s. She does exactly what her mom had trained her to be – ‘A good daughter in law’, by putting the needs of her husband’s, before her own.
If the husband is brough up with an affluent family’s patriarchy values, Amrita is brought up with middle class family’s values, where girls are groomed only to become an ideal homemaker and if she gets lucky, may be in an affluent family.
If I think calmly for a moment, that’s what I personally was trained to be, by my mom in the 80s, – a good homemaker and I turned out to be minimally ambitious as well. But I am not cringing over it either. I believe I am reasonably a good homemaker. I am pretty efficient in what I do, and most importantly, I have my self respect and self esteem and yes, all thanks to my husband.
But the question arises, what if I was not treated with the respect that I think I deserved. Irrespective of the decades that I belonged to and even with the very few ambitions that I had, I’m sure I would have seen it as an instant panic alarm in the arranged marriage scenario of mine.
I would have tried to discuss with my husband that I am NOT OK with the way I am being treated and that I am hurt. But then, that’s me. It’s got to do with my personality I guess, irrespective of my mother’s brought up. But where will I get that instinct to protect my self respect – is it from the education, the society, the people around me? No, it’s from within me. My own nature needs to urge me to do so.
I wonder why Amrita, Taapsee’s character never spoke about it until the day she was slapped in front of the guests at home. Mind it, the slap was not a specific one, like the husband beating up the wife kind. It was an impulsive one, originating from the frustration of the news on his failure to excel in his dream career. And the poor wife had to end up taking the brunt. It looks like he would have slapped or man handled or pushed anyone who had tried to calm him down at that time.
The husband is a spoilt brat, caught up in the career rat-race, doesn’t know to treat women, thinks a dinner or a diamond necklace could fix any issues with his wife, all this instead of saying a heartfelt apology for his behavior – the ultimate unbelievable kind. Yes, he is a moron. But why did she take so long to put the relationship the way she would have loved it to be, right from day one of the marriage. She felt inferior to do so may be. Or there are some ‘Slow Bloomers’ like Amrita, who realise it ever so late, because their values of obedience to their husband and his family are so damn deep rooted. May be it takes a bang on their head or a tight slap to awaken such people from their fairly tale dreamy world.
The movie’s biggest success lies in bringing to light that, whether we like it or not, such systems do exist, which handicaps the women folks even today, in the Indian subcontinent.
Do we blame it on the, ‘arranged marriage system’ in the country, which is thankfully fast dying, at least amongst the educated corporate lot. Again, we can’t point to the system of marriage alone, as this is not exclusive to that type of marriages alone. It again points to the kind of person that you are. The personality that you have become irrespective of your upbringing, your education and society.
Some subtle yet powerful acting from Taapsee and this is completely in contrast to the role of hers in Manmarzian. The girl is on the roll, creating a niche for herself like Ayushman Khurana and you are glad that such female talents are let to shine through in the ‘so called’ male dominated industry.
The lawyer and maid’s abuse stories were two end of the spectrum but the lawyer liberating herself after the cues she gets from Taapee’s character, was however not depicted powerfully enough.
On the other hand, I keep wondering how the Taapsee’s character would have reacted if the husband had genuinely apologized to her for slapping her unintentionally. Would she forgive him and get back to the normal, No:1 housewife contender that she was before?
Yes, not all people would behave the way we want them to and they let others walk all over them. They allow them to be taken for granted until one fine day, when it all dawns on them.
I am happy Amrita files for a divorce but I am not content because she never discussed with her husband the issues that bothered her in their relationship, as any normal couple would do, right from day one of the marriage. If the in equal economic background and low self esteem are the barriers that refrained her from speaking her mind, then it’s sad, and she needed that slap to free herself.
A good watch. It could have been a great one, if the pacing was faster. Is it that our expectations are high from the director Anubhav Sinha’s previous work, Article 15? May be, may be not.