A gentle, empathetic
story about acid-attack
survivors becomes
over-expository in its
final stretchREVIEW
MEGHNA GULZAR’S
CHHAPAAKis the se-
cond major Indian
feature film of the past
12 months (along with
the Malayalam film
Uyare) about an acid-at-
tack survivor. Both sto-
ries are about a woman
picking up the pieces of
her life and serving as
an inspiration to others,
but Chhapaak—being
based on the real-life
experiences of Laxmi
Agarwal—is also expli-
citly an ‘issue’ film
about the campaign
against easy availability
of acid in the market.
This makes for anabsorbing story that
is well-performed all
round, notably by
Deepika Padukone
as Malti, Madhurjeet
Sarghi as her lawyer
Archana and Vikrant
Massey as the diligent
journalist-turned-
activist Amol.
Malti is fighting to get
her own assailant con-
victed, but she is also
trying to help and em-
power others. The film
doesn’t shy away from
suggesting that—with
well-off benefactors fa-
cilitating the best medi-
cal treatment for her—
she is more privileged
than many other lower-
middle-class acid-attack
survivors. In one quiet,
nuanced scene, another
girl, badly scarred, is as-
tonished to learn thatMalti has had seven sur-
geries already.
The film slackens in
its final section when it
provides Malti’s back-
story in an unnecessa-
rily extended flashback,
complete with a slo-mo
recreation of the attack
and the cliched image
of a courtroom in
sombre silence. But
it pulls off the smaller
moments very well:
the depiction of the
gently confrontational
relationship between
Malti and Amol, scenes
involving the lawyer’s
family life or a dialogue
that very fleetingly but
pointedly raises the
question of whether
an acid ban can really
achieve anything, given
the levels of toxicity in
the hearts of many.An Acid
Test
By Jai Arjun SinghA still from
Chhapaak122 february 2020
Reader’s Digest