#NewsBytesRecommends: 'The Great Indian Kitchen'—no-holds-barred portrayal of sexist social fabric
Malayalam filmmaker Jeo Baby's pathbreaking 2021 film The Great Indian Kitchen is the kind of movie that makes you realize why you fell in love with cinema in the first place. A searing drama that gets to the heart of the matter and dissects sexism, patriarchy, internalized misogyny, and societal gender-based constructions, it holds a mirror to the grueling situation of women in India.
This is the premise of the drama
TGIK revolves around an unnamed woman married to an unnamed man. Once they get married as per arranged marriage customs, the veneer of a happy life is ripped apart. The man and his family begin pressurizing the "wife" to do fatiguing household chores from before sunrise to late at night as her career, ambitions, and self-respect die a slow, suffocating death.
The film doesn't name its central characters; here's why
It is quite significant that neither the man nor the woman is named in this Malayalam film. It lends the film a heightened degree of realism and relativity as the drama becomes a microcosm of our own society—these people can be anyone. This is not a one-off incident but an ill-starred reality that millions of women in the Indian subcontinent can relate to.
Household tasks capture the protagonist's predicament well
The household tasks carried out by the wife here become a larger extension of who she is and the situation she is trapped into. From her sink filled to the brim because it's clogged with garbage to the kitchen pipe dripping day by day and adding to the pre-existing kitchen mess, she finds herself stuck, grasping at straws for even a modicum of self-respect.
What about the protagonist's career? It doesn't matter
The wife's desire to become a dance teacher is shoved mercilessly into the background, and her career ceases to be important or even worthy of discussion. What takes the front seat, instead, is her husband's and in-laws' tyranny that masquerades as a woman's "duty" toward her family. It may not seem a gigantic problem at the first glance, but her festering wounds run deep.
How does internalized misogyny work? The drama explains
There is also a striking portrayal of internalized misogyny in TGIK. It further peddles the proven idea that patriarchy isn't simply exercised only by men and is unfortunately also a tool wielded by women who automatically place their gender below that of their counterparts, encouraging other women to simply "trudge on," "adjust," and "compromise" in their new home. What's a woman's real home, anyway?
The protagonist finally steps up to her in-laws in climax
In the climax, TGIK comes full circle as the wife stands up to her oppressors and walks out on them toward her own career, independence, and sovereignty. Devoid of any unnecessary melodrama or over-the-top monologues, the scene hits just the right chords, asserting that revolting against injustice might come at its own pace and time, but it can certainly turn one's life 180 degrees.
Check out the movie on Amazon Prime Video today
The Great Indian Kitchen is a film that should be watched by everyone—women, men, and even teenagers so that the seeds of feminism can be sown into them early on. Household tasks should never be gendered, and TGIK makes a robust case for breaking the toxicity of families and for stepping out of loveless marriages merely held together by an expired glue of compromise.
