Women everywhere know what they have to do to keep the social equilibrium functional around them. No one has ever called it out like Thappad did.

Yes we are all complicit in the reality that we get treated like second class citizens, mostly not because we like it, but because we want to keep the peace of the centuries of patriarchy that we someone feel safe in. Amrita is us. She is the person happy taking over a gender role essayed for her by the society – till a very public act of domestic violence snaps her out of her slumber.

Her husband seems non apologetic, giving her reasons for his behavior and being more concerned about how the situation looked to family and outsiders and not about how she felt. The lawyer who helps her with filing a divorce had been doing the same justification of her existence, with a husband who took away the glory of all her wins, till she understands why she felt empty within even when winning.

Amrita’s housekeeper, another victim of violence by her husband, finds the strength to stand up to the possibility that if she stands up to the violence, she may lose her home . Losing home was less important than the dignity of being a human being before being a woman, a wife or a girl friend.

The movie assaults your senses in the most sophisticated way by bringing home the message without losing the impact of the narrative even for the blink. The storytelling is so powerful that you become Amrita, her lawyer, her brother’s girlfriend, the housekeeper and the neighbor who sees hope in a more respectful relationship between her 13 year old daughter and the boy she cycles with. The casting is perfect, the actors authentic and if you are a woman, you will connect with the narrative.

This is a milestone movie and I wish this could become an international release in more global languages because Amrita is the woman from anywhere. Everyday