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Reviews
Thappad (2020)
Taapsee Anubhav duo does it again. Must watch !
I might sound a bit biased, but I believe that Taapsee Pannu is the best thing that has happened to Bollywood in the last few years. One look at the movies she has chosen in the past would probably do justice to my opinion.
Pink,Badla,Manmarziyaan, Game Over and Mulk are all movies with rock-hard scripts and Taapsee has proved herself to be a very bankable female lead. It's nice to have someone in Bollywood who is not in the normal song-dance and playing the eye-candy to the hero rat race and yet remains very popular in mainstream movies as well as critically acclaimed.
With Thappad, she partners with Anubhav Sinha again, who is having a dream run, post his career changing Mulk, followed by Article 15.
Coming back to Thappad: though it might appear to some people as a movie dealing with 'Domestic Violence' it is not. Taapsee plays Amrita (Amu), an urban house-wife to perfection. She's joined by Tanvi Azmi who plays her mother-in-law ,Ratna Pathak Shah (her mother) and Kumud Mishra (Taapsee's father, one of the highlights of the movie).
Things are fine in Amu's life as she and her husband, Vikram (played by Pavail Gulati - a newcomer who has done a couple of Netflix movies prior to this), are scheduled to fly and settle in London, as part of Vikram's new Office assignment, but all fell apart one evening, when Vikram slaps Amrita at a party at their place. It was part instinctive, as he had lost his cool, due to some bigtime corporate politics happening at his office which was killing his London dreams. But, end of day it was a Thappad. And that was reason enough for Amrita to walk out of the marriage. What follows is Amrita's decision of filing a divorce and everyone she knew, trying to tell her that it's just a slap, and she should brush it off, as this is supposed to be a normal thing, which happens in more than half of India's households. Only her father supports her decision.
Even the lady lawyer she appoints (played beautifully by Maya Sarao) is not convinced that only a slap could be reason enough for filing a divorce.
1. Is he having an affair?
2. Are you having an affair?
3. Any sexual problems?
are some of the questions thrown at her, and Amrita has a hard time explaining everyone that it's just the slap, and nothing else.
One Slap, but that should not have happened, come what may.
You tend to feel sorry for Vikram, at times.
I mean, he is a nice guy, successful, good-looking, decent, caring and so much in love with Amu.
You really feel bad when they meet at their lawyer's office (Ram Kapoor playing Vikram's lawyer) and they communicate with each other via the lawyers.
At one point, you're asking yourself, Isn't she going too far with this now ?
Well, Vikram is no abusive, drunk, violent wife beater, and he deserves a second chance. Doesn't he ?That is where Anubhav Sinha wants us to retrospect.
He shows us that side of the deep rooted patriarchy and societal norms which are still so prevalent in today's society, that too across all the strata. I mean it's not that just the lower class are the ones who are okay with a husband slapping (like Amrita's maid - Sunita , played convincingly by Geetika Vidya), here Vikram is an uber cool guy who drives a Mercedes.
Then there are little cameos from Dia Mirza, who plays their neighbour and Manav Kaul, Amrita's lawyer's husband.
There are these little subplots like the lawyer who's having an affair of sorts of her own, Dia, a single mother raising a teenage girl, the maid's wife-beating husband, and Vikram's office politics. All these might look non-essential at parts, but these sub plots actually hold the movie at it's place very well, else it would have started to become slow at places.
The mothers are equally distraught at the thought of family reputation, taking a beating and even the lawyers try to dissuade her offering an out of court settlement. But Amrita is a no- nonsense woman and would stop at nothing, and this hard journey is what this movie is all about.
Go and watch it. I assure, You'd not be disappointed.
Buro Sadhu (2019)
The most different movie of the year.
Is there anyone around who has felt depressed, and not succumbed to Old Monk for immediate relief at least once in life?
'Buro Sadhu' (literal translation of the famous rum - Old Monk) is a very relatable tale of the life of Abir, (played to perfection by the inimitable Ritwik Chakraborty) a young man who's struggling with dejection from a failed relationship in one hand and concurrently with his career as a scriptwriter/Assistant director in the movie industry which is not really taking off.
The movie touches on the sensitive subjects like Dejection, Depression, Borderline Personality Disorder and Alcoholism all very carefully, never going overboard / off-track once. The music and the background score of the movie is amazing, easily the best in recent times. The songs - 'Jawle jhapas na' , 'Askara' and 'Nayan tomare parena dekhite' are already very popular.
Direction is top notch, and there's a very intriguing twist in the tail. Highly recommended.
Go, watch 'Buro Sadhu' before it disappears from the screens.
Thank me later.