The biggest problem with Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (Eng.: Toilet: A Love Story) is that its ideas are noble.
Unfortunately, editor Shree Narayan Singh’s (Baby) debut directorial venture can’t seem to decide how to balance romance, satire, and propaganda. Eventually, what unfolds is a Public Service Announcement that has the potential to grate on viewers’ nerves for what feels like an eternity. Quite an ironic situation, this, especially considering Singh’s prior experience.
But let’s get to the basics first—while genre-benders are no game changers in the many potboiler-friendly film industries India houses, there have been a few exceptions of deliberation. Maneesh Sharma’s Fan may have had a lukewarm critical and commercial reception, but it boasted two solid image-systems that were starkly different from each other—in psychosis, tone, and otherwise.
Toilet, unfortunately, just doesn’t know where it must go.
The film might break ground on the long running open-defecation issue that has been plaguing India and its fight for better sanitation and hygiene—and if we’re to be honest, it gets quite a few things right. The makers succeed in raising many points on cause, effect, and perspective of a town’s residents being a deal-breaker. Society is funny that way, and it’s quite important for us as citizens to understand our responsibilities towards the environment we live in. To make that the McGuffin of a possible romance might have sounded fun on paper, but the execution seems both self-contradictory and offensive.
Toilet: Ek Prem Katha may not be an intolerable watch by any means. The frustration, however, will arise mainly from just how little the issue really matters to the movie.
Throughout the film’s narrative, we witness the creators painting vivid brushstrokes on the many issues women face in India. A potent, yet unsubtle running commentary in Toilet is a woman’s internalization of misogyny in a society steeped in patriarchy, thereby continuing the propagation of the many offenses on their own gender. This is unfortunately where the problems begin. The foundations of Keshav and Jaya’s—played splendidly by Akshay Kumar (Special 26) and Bhumi Pednekar (Dum Lagake Haisha; Eng.: Heave Ho!)—romance constitute stalking, clicking a woman’s photos without consent, and the age-old mansplaining. Shashank Khaitan’s Badrinath ki Dulhaniya (Eng.: The Bride of Badrinath), which released earlier this year, treads many similar pathways. The difference between the two though, is that while Khaitan’s film is self-aware of its sins, and calls out on them, Singh’s route goes the much-taken road of normalization and borderline gaslighting. Add to its woes the gross underutilization of the wonderfully nuanced Pednekar’s strong character, and the only way is down.
Now, while it can be argued that its imperfections don’t devalue its incredibly topical message, it must be brought to our attention what philosopher Marshall McLuhan rightly threw our way a long time ago (not in a galaxy far, far away): “The medium is the message.” And with a message as important—and hitherto unexplored—as this, total unwavering commitment to it would have been a better route to take. One can’t say for sure, but were the film to be identified as a potboiler first without having to use its social message as its marketing crutch , watching it would be a whole different experience—and to many, it probably still is. Knowing the intent of its makers right from the film’s announcement, however, it’s hard to backpedal from that narrative now. Singh’s Toilet: Ek Prem Katha may not be an intolerable watch by any means; you’ll have sat through its atrociously long runtime without much of a complaint per se. The frustration, however, will arise mainly from just how little the issue really matters to the movie.
Sure, Toilet, self-explanatorily, is a love story. But there’s very little love, and very little reason to defend it from being—well—defecation.
