Notes from a Film:The Social Crisis of Tu Jhoothi Main Makkar

By Ahona

It actually isn't a crisis you haven't seen before. It has been spoken and anguished about in romantic dramas over and over again. It is just that the more recent films haven't spoken about the crisis as intently as this. Simply put, it is the crisis of having to accept the fact that the person you love, thinks that their happiness/comfort does not lie with you. Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar is an elaborate and deceptively complicated attempt at portraying a man who is seemingly perfect in every which way, and yet that is not enough to be together with the woman he loves. Mickey (Ranbir Kapoor) falls for Tinni (Shraddha Kapoor) with the unabashed intensity of rom-com heroes. This might be one of the most verbose heroes I have seen in recent times. He speaks so much that the film actually interrupts his immense monologuing through his best friend, Dabbas (Anubhav Singh Bassi) who begs him to stop. Eventually, Mickey finds out that Tinni is attempting to break up with him, surreptitiously. The impact of that discovery is immense. One, there's heartbreak. And two, there's the pain of knowing that this woman you loved didn't even trust you enough to spell out the problem to you. Mickey's obsession with finding out why she wants to break up with him, when you look at it as just that, is rather logical. This need to understand why you weren't enough for someone you have loved is very humane. But that obsession with finding out her reason isn't just that it comes with a side of "I will teach her a lesson". And that assumes central importance in the film. She is desperate to find out a flaw in him so that she could pin the break-up on that flaw. He is the urbane, debonair man who thwarts those attempts without breaking a sweat. He is waiting for her to spell out the reason. At one point, frustrated by her failed attempts to find a flaw in this man, Tinni throws about her hands and feet in the air, having a full-blown breakdown. That shot of her is juxtaposed with Mickey sitting on a couch, chilled out and smug. She is in hysterics. He is collected. The gender politics of scenes like these spill over to the sentiment of other characters in the film. Bassi's character, Dabbas, endlessly complains about his wife, and how Mickey abandoned him with her even though he asked him to pull him out of it (a "guy interrupts male bestie's wedding" scenario like Kartik Aryan from Sonu Ki Titu Ki Sweety). Not once does Dabbas make a concerted attempt to leave his wife, even though he is clearly so done with her. And some might think that he complains about his wife with the same sincerity as that Uncle who shares poorly constructed WhatsApp jokes about wives controlling husbands. But it isn't that. Dabbas had actually paid Mickey before his bachelor party to smoothen his breakup. In ways, Dabbas and Tinni are similar people - in that both of them are not entirely into their partners, and neither has the ability to honestly own up to it in front of them.Occasionally, there comes a frame in the film that sums up its central dilemma rather neatly. Such as this one - where they are fastened to each other in mutual love, and yet distanced in conflict - neither one able to face the other. The lines of the song that weaves such scenes together echo other songs about people who cannot make it work - "tha kabhi pyaar toh insaaf mera karde aa, ya kabhi tha nahi saaf mana kar de aa". In moments like these, once you are told the reason why she wants to free herself from him, you find that the film reflects the rather urban difficulty of making marriages work. If this was a simple review of the film, I could have summed it up neatly and advised you on whether you should invest your time, money and attention in this film. But this isn't a review. This is an analysis of a film with its own skewed view of gender politics, its own distorted understanding of female experience of relationships and committing to it.

It is so caught up in a primitive gender binary, in understanding women as sly tricksters and men as a species trying to grapple with it, it undermines its own crisis. And because this is an analysis, I can pick apart threads from it that are somewhat cognisant of the problems of sustaining a relationship in this day and age. There's a point in the film when Tinni goes to meet Mickey's family and feels an internal urge to make herself more acceptable. So she eats less at the dinner table. She dresses differently than she usually does. The film is both observant of this thing, and ignorant of the reasons why women feel the need to change themselves for their in-laws. It completely bypasses the social conditioning that many women receive, even when their own families are somewhat progressive. When she finally does talk about the female experience of marriage, the film tries to contain that experience within a single breakdown. But the truth of the matter is, this crisis of individuality that so many women face in marriage cannot be contained as simplistically.If there is one neat conclusion that I can draw for this film, it would be about the social standpoint that it has arrived in - a romantic conflict disguised as a romantic comedy, in a society that is divided into those who still want to have happily-ever-afters in marriage, and those who think that this is impossible. Perhaps if it was less desperate in its attempt to understand its characters through this lopsided perspective of gender, and understood that sometimes people are disillusioned in a relationship irrespective of gender, and that no amount of perfection can save you from heartbreak - it would have been more understanding of its own potential.