Cinema as Cultural
Critique: Revealing the Invisible Realities of Women’s Domestic Lives in Mrs.
Debanjana Banerjee
Guest Lecturer (UG & PG)
Narasinha Dutt College
University of Calcutta
West Bengal, India
Abstract: Cinema
functions as a powerful cultural text that not only reflects societal realities
but also interrogates and transforms existing social structures. This paper
examines the ZEE5 film Mrs. as a cinematic critique of everyday patriarchy and
the invisible forms of oppression experienced by women within domestic spaces.
Drawing upon Siegfried Kracauer’s theory of cinema as a medium that reveals the
physical and social realities of everyday life, the study explores how the film
exposes the normalized burdens of domestic labour, cultural expectations, and
gendered restrictions imposed on women. Through the character of Richa, Mrs.
challenges the glorified image of the self-sacrificing housewife and highlights
how traditions, family values, and the ideology of adjustment often function as
mechanisms of control. The paper also examines the role of internalized
patriarchy among women and the contradictions of modern, educated masculinity.
Ultimately, the film emerges as a feminist cultural critique that redefines cinema’s
role in questioning inherited beliefs and imagining social change.
Keywords: Cinema as Cultural Text, Patriarchal Ideology, Gendered
Domesticity, Internalized Misogyny, Feminist Resistance
Introduction
Cinema and culture share a symbiotic relationship. The
interaction between the screen and society is a continuous feedback loop.
Cinema absorbs the culture of the society and reflects it on the screen. The
audience internalises those images and acts accordingly.
Cinema works as a mirror of society – it is the product
of society. It portrays those intricate and problematic dimensions of the
social order that are often overlooked or tactfully neglected to avoid
discomfort.
Cinemas do not just observe and
reflect, but act as a catalyst for societal reactions. They push boundaries.
Deeply ingrained cultural habits are often challenged when the audience is
forced to look directly at society's uncomfortable realities. Cinema initiates
conversations that culture previously considered taboo.
Frankfurt School film theorist Siegfried Kracauer argued
that cinema’s unique superpower is its ability to record, reveal, and redeem
ephemeral physical reality. Cinema captures everyday life, involuntary
gestures, and transient material impressions. Theory of Film: The Redemption
of Physical Reality (1960), his magnum opus, asserts that cinema excels
when it documents the raw, unpolished world, rather than imposing heavy,
theatrical artifice. Kracauer noted that the cinemas of a nation reflect its
collective psychological state far more accurately than any other medium.
Oppression and ill-treatment of women is a burning issue
in the patriarchal society, which is often magnified and portrayed alongside
domestic violence, rape, murder, acid attack, and partiality. But what is often
overlooked is that the violence against women need not always be visibly huge.
It can be merely exhausting domestic labour, constant taunting, belittling a
woman’s dreams and profession, or just a lack of appreciation. Oppression need
not always be physical. Even mental pressure throughout a long period of time
becomes unbearable and suffocating.
The ZEE5 movie, Mrs., the Hindi remake of the
Malayalam film The Great Indian Kitchen, is a poignant portrayal of the
everyday oppression of women in their own households in the name of ‘culture’,
predominant in the Indian society. The film provides a completely different
portrayal of the traditionally romanticised ‘pious housewife’. It presents
women, not as any ‘superhuman’ who is capable of doing anything and everything,
but as mere humans. They feel pain, get frustrated, have desires, get angry,
and possess every other human emotion just like a normal human being. Their
domestic space becomes the site of daily oppression rather than a safe
sanctuary.
Women as the Machineries to run the Household – Invisible
Domestic Labour
The film opens with Richa Sharma, the protagonist,
dancing her heart out. She is visibly happy and seems to be a person who is
full of life. But soon her life takes a 180-degree turn after she is married to
Diwakar Kumar, a gynaecologist. She starts to struggle navigating patriarchal
household expectations. She is expected to fit into the pre-existing abusive
family structure in the name of ‘culture’.
The traditional patriarchal households are methodically
exposed here, where women’s exhausting physical domestic labour often remains
unrecognised. Although newlywed Richa enjoys her husband’s love and care
initially, soon she too becomes the machine to run the house with her untiring
efforts. Richa’s mother-in-law, Meena, although a woman herself, becomes the
flagbearer of the toxic patriarchy by being a part of it herself and expecting
Richa to be one too. She works throughout the day without a break, without any
acknowledgement. She cooks, cleans, and keeps everything at hand for the men of
the house. The same pattern is later followed by Richa as well, although she is
not happy with it. Both women become the machinery to run the household. Just
like the machines, which only provide physical labour but are controlled by
humans, these women, too, are controlled by the men of the house. They just act
as per the men’s wishes.
Even if they are doing everything for their family, their
basic needs and facilities to make their lives easier are never allowed. Every
hardship is glorified in the name of culture. The minimum supportive sustenance
for survival is blindly and boldly denied by the men. The condition of the
women in their house is so bad that a leaking pipe is not repaired for months.
Even Vedprakash, who is called the house help, but is constantly found
assisting the men, fails to provide any help to the women. Richa and Meena are
not only insulted everyday by their husbands but are ignored by Vedprakash too.
Their words seem to be valueless to him. He always talks to them in an
insulting way.
The Complexity of Senior Women
Patriarchy in India survives because it is generationally
enforced by its own victims. The mother-in-law or mother figures in the film do
not act as allies; they act as the primary wardens of the system. The older
women force the new brides to follow their footsteps because ‘that is how the
house runs’. Instead of easing the bride’s burden, they make her feel that the
patriarchal dominance is normal. If they had to suffer and suppress their
identities to keep their marriages intact, they expect the new daughter-in-law
to do the exact same.
The character of Diwakar’s aunt, Nirjala, serves as a
brilliant and realistic portrayal of the ‘woman patriarch’. She represents the
enforcement wing of internalized misogyny.
Patriarchy does not survive solely through the actions of men; it relies
heavily on senior women within the family to force, monitor, and train younger
women into submission. When the mother-in-law temporarily leaves the house, the
aunt steps in, acting not as a maternal refuge to Richa, but as a strict warden
of the status quo. Nirjala’s primary function in the narrative is to pass down
the exact restrictions she was forced to endure. She does not look at Richa’s
exhaustion with empathy, rather she views Richa’s modern desires as a threat to
the traditional order. Through her character, Mrs. shows the tragedy of
a victim becoming the oppressor.
Patriarchy keeps women divided by offering senior women a
small amount of conditional authority over young women.
Culinary Delicacies – the Illusion of Tradition
The culinary delicacies play a major role in defining the
culture of any place. Indian food culture is often associated with elaborate,
freshly ground, and perfectly curated meals. A similar image is seen in Mrs.
as well. In her new home, Richa’s first day in the kitchen is treated as a
major cultural rite, often termed as the “Peheli Rasoi” (first meal cooked by
the new bride after marriage). While her debut in the kitchen occurred with
simple Sooji Halwa, she soon started trying complex recipes. Bharwan Karela,
Dal Pitha, Dum Pukht Biryani, she made it all, with online recipe videos and
her mother’s instructions. But none of her efforts is ever rewarded or
acknowledged. It appears as if it is the woman’s duty to spend the entire day
in the kitchen preparing complex dishes, a new variety every day. The men are
entitled to devour the food without being generous enough to appreciate the
efforts behind it.
Richa’s father-in-law, Ashwin, plays a pivotal role in
this kitchen dynamics. He is strictly against using any tool that makes the
cooking process easier. He explicitly bans the use of the electric mixer
grinder and pressure cooker, as they are not part of the Indian cooking
tradition.
This toxicity is accepted by Meena, who justifies her
husband’s illogical kitchen rules. Richa is eventually forced to abide by them,
too. She goes into the kitchen one morning and finds Meena churning white
butter by hand. This is actually a time-consuming process that requires hours.
Instances like this reinforce the societal expectations from a woman to work
like a machine. Although Meena wakes up at 6 in the morning and goes to bed at
12:30 at night, her time and efforts carry zero economic value.
Just a few days after Richa and Diwakar’s wedding, Meena
leaves for her daughter’s house as she is pregnant and needs rest. The
responsibility of the entire house falls on Richa. She is then an amateur and
struggles every day. She starts waking up at 4 in the morning to handle
everything well, but no matter how early she wakes up, the household chores
never seem to end, and she is always rushing through the house.
Despite providing her best, she is always criticised by
her father-in-law. When she uses the electric mixer grinder instead of the
manual ‘sil-batta’ (grindstone), he refuses to have the chutney and asks for
curd. Ashwin believes that the ‘sil-batta chutney’ has better flavours. The simple act of denial spoke much louder
than any criticism. Richa is yet again criticised, this time verbally, when she
tries to please the men of the house by making aromatic Biryani. Her
father-in-law dismisses her efforts as she cooks the meat in a pressure cooker
to save time. He discards it, stating – “You made this in the cooker? Then it’s
pulao, not biryani. Dum Pukht Biryani is cooked on a low flame. Nice and slow.
With patience. Layer by layer”. The dish is Pulao, not Biryani, because it is
pressure-cooked rather than slow-cooked like the traditional Biryani recipe.
Not only her in-laws, but her husband too criticises her
culinary skills. During their courtship period, Diwakar makes it clear that he
prefers home-cooked food. His critical comments on the food seem trivial but
over times those words pile up to make the criticism unbearable for Richa. The
intricate difference between ‘rotis – kept in an insulated hot-pot’ and
‘phulkas – hot off the stove’ seems to be a basic demand. One day, when Richa
fails to send him lunch and asks to order something, he remains hungry
throughout the day. After returning home that night, he rebukes her – “I work
twelve hours every day. I deserve lunch on time at least. I barely get time to
eat between patients. I survived on six black coffees today. Can I get dinner
now? And hot phulkas, please”. A woman, who is working tirelessly throughout
the mad, is made to feel bad as she fails to complete her gender specified role
for one day, not because she was being lazy, but she was indulged in the
complex, elaborate, time-consuming ways of cooking.
All this cooking rules and picky eating vanishes at once
when Richa gets her period and is not allowed to enter the kitchen for five
days. The men, proficient in critically scrutinizing and providing expert
opinion regarding the intricacies of every recipe, fail to cook for themselves.
The breakfast is ordered from the market by the home-cooked food lover,
Diwakar. For the five days, a widow woman is hired to cook and clean the house.
The father-son duo silently eats whatever she makes as she is an outsider who
will not tolerate their toxic behaviour. The women who should actually get love
and care from the family are often exploited in the name of culture and family
values, whereas, an outsider is given the privilege to cook whatever is
convenient.
Hypocrisy of the Progressive Gynaecologist
The husband’s profession as a gynaecologist is a
deliberate creative choice that unmasks a terrifying social reality. Diwakar
spends his days treating female patients and understanding the biological
complexities. Yet, his own wife in his home is reduced to a domestic machine.
Despite being a doctor who understands that menstruation
is a normal, healthy biological cycle, he quietly goes along with his family’s
regressive cultural practices – isolating Richa is her room. His clinical
medical degree completely fails to pierce through his internalised patriarchal
conditioning. For those five days, Richa is stopped from doing the household
duties, not because her body needs rest, but because the family needs to stick
to their conservative culture.
In their private life, his approach to intimacy is
clinical and self-serving. He views Richa’s body through the lens of functional
utility and personal satisfaction, completely detached from her emotional
consent or active pleasure. In traditional patriarchal setup, intimacy is
frequently framed not as a shared act of mutual desire, but as a marital duty –
a routine chore the wife is expected to fulfill, much like cooking and
cleaning.
What Mrs. portrays incredibly is marital rape
without physical violence. The film illustrates that a lack of consent does not
always look like a visible struggle; it can look like a quiet, resigned
submission because the woman feels she has no choice. By showing a highly
educated doctor completely ignoring his wife’s emotional readiness and physical
autonomy, the film delivers a sharp cultural critique of the entitlement of
patriarchy.
Institutionalised Dependency and Financial Gatekeeping
Modern Indian patriarchy rarely says “No” to a woman’s
career. Instead, it uses a far craftier tactic – the illusion of conditional
permission.
When Richa wants to pursue her passion for dance and seek
a job, the response from her husband and father-in-law is not a violent
outburst. It is a patronising, smiling dismissiveness. Diwakar says, “Why do
you need to earn? I make enough for both of us.” By framing financial
independence as unnecessary, the family effectively cuts off her routes to
escape the domination. It reinforces the narrative that a husband’s financial
stability is the ultimate trophy for a woman, rendering her own career
aspirations foolish.
When Richa and Diwakar visits Richa’s parents for the
first time after their wedding, Richa’s mother prepares elaborate meal for them,
all home-cooked, even the desserts, as Diwakar does not like food from outside.
He appreciates the food, not by praising but by asking his mother-in-law,
“Aunty, did you train her to make all these dishes? No worries. What this mummy
couldn’t teach her; her other mummy will.” What could have been a simple praise
becomes a taunt and comparison. Not only Richa but her mother and mother-in-law
are insulted by this statement. Women are merely reduced to cooks. Their
primary duty becomes cooking.
On the very same dining table, Richa is seen praising her
husband’s passion for his work. But when Diwakar gets to know that Richa is
equally passionate about dancing, he just smirks and belittles her desires and
capabilities.
When she finally decides to talk Diwakar that she is not
getting any time to work on her pre-existing dance troupe due to the overload
of household chores, his reaction is cold and humiliating – “What work? Does
this job even pay? Or is it just for kicks? Richu, I’ve seen 50-60 patients
through the day and you’re piling up on me as soon as I’ve come home. Will you
let me catch a breath?” The entire concept of seeking permission shows the
double standards of the society. While a man can get back to his work after
marriage, a woman needs to seek permission to do the same, and is often denied.
The day when Richa finishes her household jobs quickly to
go for a dance teacher job interview, she is stopped by her father-in-law –
“Didn’t I advise you against pursuing a job? Remember? You know, your
mother-in-law… she has a PhD in Economics. But her home and kids were always
her first priority. Richa Kumar, care of Dr Ashwin Kumar. That’s the address
you wrote in your application, right? So then… You’re under my care, isn’t
it?”. Earlier she had talked about it but was said, “It won’t suit our family’s
reputation”. The line between care and control is often blurred by the ‘passive
patriarch’ who always talks sweetly and wears a smile.
Although Richa is a trained dancer, her father-in-law
forbids her from working, masking it behind the regressive claim that “a woman
staying at home brings prosperity”.
The Weaponisation of Adjustment – “Adjust Kar Lo”
If typical Indian patriarchal culture had a slogan, it
would be “Adjust kar lo!!!” (Just compromise). When Richa communicates her
exhaustion and unhappiness to her own parents, they do not offer her refuge.
Instead, they tell her to lower her expectations. Her mother does not offer a
revolutionary solution; she pulls out the age-old societal script. She counsels
Richa by normalising the abuse, essentially saying, “This happens in every
household. Women have to bend a little to make a marriage work.” To her
parents, Richa’s inability to cope up with the household work and her husband’s
demands is not seen as a systematic failure of the marriage and the society at
large – it is viewed as Richa’s failure to be ‘wife material’. They are willing
to sacrifice Richa’s mental sanity and career dreams just to maintain the
status quo of a ‘well settled life’.
Her own parents and in-laws constantly demand that she
compress her identity and desires to fit into the mould of the ‘ideal
daughter-in-law’. In this cultural setup, a divorced daughter is viewed as a
social failure and a burden on the family’s honour. The burden of keeping a
marriage alive falls completely on the woman’s capacity to absorb misery.
The film brilliantly shows that Richa’s husband, Diwakar,
is not a bad man by society’s standards – he does not drink, he does not beat
her, he is not involved in any extra-marital affair, and he provides well. Mrs.
shows that the culture itself is the villain. It trains ordinary men to have
upper hand and transform women into invisible, disposable, replaceable
machinery.
In Indian cultural vocabulary, ‘adjustment’ is considered
to be a sacred, peaceful virtue. The film exposes it as a toxic mechanism of
control. As long as there is no extreme physical violence, any level of
emotional erasure or identity-crushing is deemed acceptable. It is the very
betrayal at her maiden home – the absolute realisation that adjustment means
the slow death of her soul – that gives her the final, defiant strength to
reject both households and choose herself.
The Climax – Reclaiming Independence
For decades, the mainstream cinema has put the
‘sacrificing heroine’ who reforms her husband or quietly endures her plight for
the sake of the family. Mrs. boldly rejects this traditional narrative.
Richa’s final rebellion is raw and deliberately ungraceful. Fed up with the
constant domination and degradation, she serves the guests the dirty, leaking
water from the broken kitchen sink. When Diwakar shouts at her, she throws a
bucket full of the same dirty water on him and leaves the house.
Her exit is not a tearful act; it is and unapologetic,
calculated decision to walk away from the everyday toxicity and organised
domestic abuse. The film ends with a powerful feminist resolution – Richa
reclaims her autonomy. She gains financial independence as a professional
dancer.
While the kitchen confined her and the husband’s
perspective objectified her, dance becomes the only space where Richa truly
owns her flesh and bone. In the kitchen, she scrubbed, wiped, and chopped to
the patriarchy’s rhythm. When she dances, she reclaims her true identity.
Patriarchy demands that everything a woman does must have a utility that serves
the family. Dance is a direct threat to this structure because it is an act of
pure, independent self-expression that does not serve the patriarch. It is an
act of pure joy, done solely for herself.
Diwakar remarries. He simply replaces Richa with a new,
innocent bride – proving that the problem was never her, but the machine of
patriarchy. The movie concludes with the absolute triumph of dance over
gynaecology. Richa leaves the suffocating authority of her husband’s home to
follow her own dreams. She uses her body, not to serve a household or a
reproductive cycle, but to sustain herself economically and spiritually –
proving that her body belongs exclusively to her.
Conclusion
Cinema, as a cultural text, does not merely document the
realities of society; it participates in the process of questioning,
negotiating, and transforming those realities. The ZEE5 film Mrs. stands as a
powerful example of how cinema can uncover the invisible structures that govern
everyday life. By shifting the focus from extreme forms of violence to the
subtle, normalized forms of oppression within domestic spaces, the film
challenges the culturally accepted image of the ideal wife and homemaker. It
reveals that patriarchy does not always operate through direct aggression;
rather, it often survives through traditions, expectations, emotional
manipulation, and the unquestioned division of labour.
In accordance with Siegfried Kracauer’s understanding of
cinema as a medium capable of capturing and revealing the physical and social
realities of everyday existence, Mrs. brings attention to the ordinary moments
that are frequently overlooked—the endless hours spent in the kitchen, the
emotional exhaustion of caregiving, the denial of personal aspirations, and the
silent sacrifices demanded from women. The film’s strength lies in its
portrayal of the mundane, because it is within these seemingly ordinary
routines that deeply rooted cultural inequalities reveal themselves. Through
Richa’s journey, the film exposes how domesticity, when imposed rather than
chosen, becomes a mechanism of control rather than a space of comfort.
The film also complicates the understanding of patriarchy
by demonstrating that it is not sustained by men alone but by an entire
cultural system that conditions both men and women. The characters of Meena and
Nirjala reveal how patriarchal values are transmitted across generations, often
through those who themselves have experienced oppression. Similarly, Diwakar’s
character challenges the assumption that education, profession, or modern appearance
automatically guarantees progressive thinking. His identity as a gynecologist
contrast sharply with his inability to acknowledge his wife’s autonomy, proving
that patriarchal conditioning can exist even within spaces associated with
knowledge and modernity.
However, Mrs. does not conclude with victimhood; instead,
it transforms Richa’s struggle into an act of resistance and self-reclamation.
Her decision to leave the oppressive household and pursue dance represents a
rejection of the idea that a woman’s identity must be defined by her
relationship with her family. Dance becomes a symbol of freedom, individuality,
and ownership over her own body. The film ultimately challenges the cultural
belief that a woman’s worth lies in her ability to adjust, sacrifice, and serve
others.
Thus, Mrs. becomes more than a story of one woman’s
domestic struggle; it becomes a cultural critique of the systems that normalize
female subordination. It demonstrates the transformative potential of cinema by
forcing audiences to confront uncomfortable realities that often remain hidden
behind the language of tradition and family values. The film proves that cinema
is not only a reflection of culture but also a powerful force capable of
reshaping cultural consciousness, questioning inherited beliefs, and creating
possibilities for a more equitable social order.
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Theory: From Margin to Center. Routledge, 2015.
Kracauer, Siegfried. Theory
of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality. Princeton UP, 1960.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual
Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen, vol. 16, no. 3, 1975, pp. 6–18.
Mrs. Directed by Arati Kadav, performances
by Sanya Malhotra, Nishant Dahiya, and Kanwaljit Singh, ZEE5, 2025.
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