{"id":3408,"date":"2016-07-30T02:46:19","date_gmt":"2016-07-29T21:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=3408"},"modified":"2016-07-30T02:46:19","modified_gmt":"2016-07-29T21:16:19","slug":"sui-dhaaga-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=3408","title":{"rendered":"Sui Dhaaga Review: A Fine Portrait of the Emotional Labour of Small-Town Women"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I<\/span><\/p>f you blindly walk into <\/span>Sui Dhaaga<\/span><\/i>, chances are that you\u2019ll find it impossible to recognise that Sharat Katariya directed \u2013 or even wrote it. Three years after he made <\/span>Dum Laga Ke Haisha<\/span><\/i><\/a>, a sublime romantic comedy that articulated the frustrations of small-town men, having to bear the weight of masculinity, Katariya returns with another small-town setting. Except, this time around, <\/span>Sui Dhaaga<\/span><\/i> looks like a sanitised, dishonest, and a predictable offering from the Yash Raj stable \u2013 embroiling itself in every cliche Katariya\u2019s debut consciously distanced itself from. <\/span>\n\nSet in Chanderi (the second film this year after <\/span>Stree<\/span><\/i><\/a>), <\/span>Sui Dhaaga<\/span><\/i> revolves around a modest family of tailors and craftsmen who\u2019ve given up their calling and taken up odd jobs to survive. Mauji (Varun Dhawan), his wife Mamta (<\/span>Anushka Sharma<\/span><\/a>) and his parents (Raghubhir Yadav and Yamini Das) live together in a small house, where privacy, space, and money are all a distant dream. It\u2019s also why Mauji and Mamta\u2019s marriage is stunted \u2013 they\u2019re domestic partners instead of life partners. <\/span>\n\nThe film charts Mauji\u2019s journey from being an ill-treated assistant at a city shop to him fulfilling his entrepreneurial dreams. Naturally, the road to starting his own tailoring business is fraught with the obvious villains \u2013 poverty, an ailing <\/span>parent,<\/span><\/a> scheming urban middlemen, family feuds, and a fashion show competition where they\u2019re the bumbling underdogs on the ramp. <\/span>\n\nYou don\u2019t need to sit through 120 minutes to know how it unfolds, given that the narrative is hardly novel. It also doesn\u2019t help that Dhawan, the film\u2019s lead, is evidently sloppy. He\u2019s either over-emoting or not emoting at all, managing to hit the right note in rare scenes. If anything, it underlines just how much of a misfit Dhawan is in Katariya\u2019s universe \u2013 there are several moments where you almost yearn for an Ayushmann Khurrana, Rajkummar Rao, or a <\/span>Vicky Kaushal<\/span><\/a> to steer the plot to its destination. <\/span>\n\nEven more puzzling is Katariya insisting on fixing an urban gaze for most of <\/span>Sui Dhaaga<\/span><\/i> \u2013 a strange choice for the director, who\u2019s adept at bringing alive the nuances of small-town India. As a result, the film\u2019s climax loses its grip, eventually ending in a victory that feels created, not earned. <\/span>\n\nThat\u2019s not to say that <\/span>Sui Dhaaga<\/span><\/i> doesn\u2019t have its flourishes: \u201cChaav Laga\u201d is shot with the kind of tenderness that is bettered with every viewing. The film eloquently captures the small intimacies between a <\/span>husband<\/span><\/a> and wife, who respect each other, but aren\u2019t allowed to express their affection. Like in <\/span>DLKH,<\/span><\/i> Katariya gets the interpersonal relationships down pat, like how the \u201cphulka roti\u201d is always served to patriarch of the house, how the barter-system with neighbours involve a cup of tea and samosa, and how Mamta relies on her mother-in-law to communicate her feelings to her own husband. <\/span>\n

Katariya\u2019s mastery is most evident when he translates the burden of emotional and domestic labour every married small-town woman inevitably shoulders.<\/blockquote>\nIn fact, the few moments where we get to relive Katariya\u2019s sharp directorial voice is in the film\u2019s treatment of its two <\/span>female leads<\/span><\/a> \u2013 Mamta and her mother-in-law. In a film where the overarching theme is dignity of labour, Katariya\u2019s mastery is most evident when he translates the burden of emotional and domestic labour every married small-town woman inevitably shoulders. In the film for instance, Mamta and her mother-in-law begin their days much before their husbands \u2013 when they wake up at 9 am, the two women have already filled water and made six cups of chai. Several scenes where newer tasks are dumped on Mamta even before she\u2019s finished the ones preceding them, drive home this very reality. Especially in one hilarious scene, where Mamta’s hand gets stuck inside a jar of achaar (pickle) inside a hospital and amid a tragedy.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nLike Sandhya in<\/span> DLKH<\/span><\/i>, even Mamta is practical, strong-headed, and helps Mauji navigate his ambitions and feelings, matching him step by step. Sharma, an inherent over-emoter, restrains her own vividness, balancing Mamta\u2019s meekness and her self-reliance and Sui Dhaaga<\/em> is proof of her versatility. Even, in scenes where Mamta is required to smile, we don’t see the wide-eyed smile we’ve naturally come to expect from the actress; instead, her face barely contorts.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nA few minutes into the film, Mamta\u2019s<\/span> mother-in-law<\/span><\/a> suffers a heart attack, but instantly goes back to the kitchen after her surgery. Years of unconditional domestic labour has put her on autopilot: Even when she collapses on the floor, her first thought is of her kitchen. It\u2019s probably why she doesn\u2019t make a big deal about her daughter-in-law heading out to work and respects her ambitions \u2013 because she doesn\u2019t want Mamta to end up like her in a few years. That’s the \u201cMade in India\u201d story that <\/span>Sui Dhaaga<\/span><\/i> should have focused its lens on.<\/span>\n\nFor it\u2019s in these moments that the director deftly highlights how emotionally dependent small-town men are on their wives, especially for their emotional needs. And\u00a0<\/span>Sui Dhaaga <\/span><\/i>makes you wonder<\/span>, what really stopped Sharat Katariya from making these women the crux of his film?<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sharat Katariya\u2019s Sui Dhaaga falters in several places, but it shines when the spotlight is on its women. In a film about dignity of labour, Katariya\u2019s mastery is most evident in parts where the focus is on the immense emotional and domestic labour every married small-town woman inevitably shoulders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":3409,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3114],"tags":[1531,141,26,710,1743,546,995,1788,4412],"class_list":["post-3408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bollywood","tag-anushka-sharma","tag-bollywood","tag-cinema","tag-feminism","tag-film-review","tag-films","tag-hindi","tag-review","tag-sui-dhaaga"],"yoast_head":"\nSui Dhaaga Review: A Fine Portrait of the Emotional Labour of Small-Town Women<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sharat Katariya\u2019s Sui Dhaaga falters in several places, but it shines when the spotlight is on its women. 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