Mrs. Movie Review — Sucharita Tyagi
2021 mein, I have to admit I wasn’t the first one to discover The Great Indian Kitchen, infact many of you commented on my channel and said ki Neestream karke naya OTT platform hai, uspar film hai, please watch.
It was a different time, people were still actively watching and engaging with REAL, ACTUAL movie reviews. Not that rubbish many of you are watching now, you know who you are.
I watched the film on Neestream, and it caught me ITNA by surprise, that I HAD to speak with Jeo Baby, and pick his brains, to figure HOW does a MAN, a MALE member of the human species, make such an incredibly feminist film, and made ME feel so seen?
Pehla trailer movie ka 2023 mein aaya tha, since then its ben busy doing rounds of some film festivals. Finally now streaming on Zee 5, Mrs. is approachable and innocuous on the surface — a seemingly simple story about food, family, and love — but one which reveals itself to be more of a feminist statement on patriarchy, joh life mein itni ingrained hai, so many of us don’t even see it anymore. Kabhi unfortunately arranged marriage meeting jhelni padi hai hai aapko agar, you’ve heard an uncle declare “Ghar ka khaana accha lagta hai,” this one will hit home.
Richa, playedby Sanya Malhotra is married off to Diwakar, who is played by Nishant Dahiya. The arrangement not entirely against her wishes, but her opinion isn’t explicitly solicited either. She is a dutiful bahu, helps in the kitchen, dotes over her handsome husband, bows her head in namaste as many times as is required of her. A few weeks into this new marriage, her mother in law has to go tend to her own daughter, the household’s burden is now on Richa, and she begins to feel the real weight of the burden she has been saddled with.
Kai gharon ki tarah, iss ghar mein bhi, the sound of the “sil batta” — grinding stone — is how her husband knows his mother is in the room next door. Papa ke joote ready rakhe hain, toh means ghar theek se chal raha hai, aur agar ajwain ka paani time par nahi aaya matlab things have begun to fall apart.
And of course, that deceptively delicious food, jiski recipes perfect hui hain thanks to 1000s of years of oppression, jinko pyaar se “tradition” keh dete hain, ah, so cute. Each new dish, is a metaphor for control, the bubbling oil is the explosive frustration it causes. At one point, Richa’s whole being seems to merge with the very food she cooks — the camera helplessly looks at her upwards, from within a kadhai she is toiling over.
Kadav and co-writers Anu Singh Chaudhary, with Harman Baweja, yeah, wahee Harman Baweja he has a writing credit, they try hard to adapt the original to suit a very typical Delhi household. But beyond the car license plates saying DL, and infused inflection in the spoken Hindi, this could be any city in India. While it is sad to observe the universality of the story, it also makes you wonder why then this remake was necessary, when the original exists on a streaming platform right next to this one, bilkul aaju-baaju icons hain TV par. Arati Kadav is a visionary filmmaker, her feature Cargo remains one of my fav Hindi films of the last decade. However, outside of the technical achievement of making this film, and conducting its process, most of the credit for any effect Mrs. might have, belongs to Jeo Baby.
Mrs. is too faithful a remake. Barring some (ineffective) song and dance, every beat is nearly identical to the original. Even if one hasn’t watched Jeo Baby’s film, the Bollywood sheen, texture and overall voice in Mrs. is so overwhelming and complete in, one can pretty accurately predict where each scene is headed. Not to mention eager but sad back ground music ready to hold your hand a little too tight, reminding you WHAT you must feel, in each moment, lest the message is lost. The adaptation also leans away from commenting on dictatorial practices ingrained within religion that stop women from living full lives, while men pray to female deities all day long. Despite not being subtle at all, somehow Mrs still manages to subdue its own rebellion.
There is necessary commentary threaded through the film — a house-maid unquestioningly cleans up endless messes, nonchalantly mentioning how she is shunned for her lower cast, shaadi ke gift are absurdly practical kitchen appliances and utensils, with a lone pair of headphones tossed. The message is clear: stay in your designated space, and if you must listen to music, do it quietly. Russian nesting dolls bhi dikhti hain, the larger dolls are men smaller one are women — expected to shrink and disappear. The film’s feminist critique might be blunt but it could be effective for those who still need to be shown the heavily lopsided aftermath of what happens and who loses when modernity and tradition clash in Indian households. A father-in-law who never utters thank you, a husband who never truly sees his wife, and a set of parents who keep extolling the virtues of “adjust kar lo beta”, are familiar beats for anyone watching, but beyond the familiarity, Mrs doesn’t take its protagonist’s catharsis to a point where a the audience is poised to feel the protagonist’s release. The lacklustre, uninspired closing song doesn’t QUITE bookend this screenplay as it was intended to.
Sanya Malhotra, as I’ve said before, remains one of the more engaging young actors. In Mrs. she plays it safe and much like costars Kanwaljeet, Nishant Dahiya, the result is a perfectly serviceable performance. The actors together enable Mrs. to repeat an essential question: how radical does everyday feminism need to be to escape cycles of unflinching abuse? Moments in this film might compell you to actively curse at the screen — and that amid the quality of mainstream Hindi cinema we are saddled with right now, seems like the sign of a movie doing what it’s supposed to.
