Nirbaak - Coz Silence Speaks Louder than Words!

Nirbaak- A Man, A Tree, A bitch, A Corpse…

Firstly, Nirbaak is not at all a movie for everyone. Even the ones who regularly write reviews and critical appreciations for movies may not like it. I saw people going out of the theatre while the movie was still on. May be they were in search for a mushy love story, with an item song or two! Whatever may be the reason, Nirbaak is NOT meant for all! Let me tell you all that this is not a critical review of the movie. This is just my personal thoughts about it!

Being a silent person myself, I was always of the view that silence speaks more than words. And this is what Nirbaak speaks of. It speaks of love, without actually being loud about it. It conversed in silence, without a word, and still communicated so much across the audience. The movie portrays myriad faces of love. The surreal, narcissist love of a man who falls for himself every time he looks at himself at the mirror, the tree which falls for the woman who sits under it on a bench, the selfless love of a dog for her master, and the weird, necrophillic love of a man for a corpse!

At the very beginning it is shown that the film is a tribute to Salvadore Dali. Along with it, the depiction of the whole movie through hand shadows at the commencement is unusually beautiful. The four stories are inter-weaved in a brilliant manner. I have never been a fan of Anjan Dutta. Be it for his music or acting. But trust me, I don’t think anybody could have portrayed his character better than him in the movie. The unrealistic love of Ritwick Chakraborty for the corpse of Sushmita Sen may make no sense, but it proves how strong an actor Ritwick actually is. Again, the introduction of Sushmita Sen in the Bengali movie industry couldn’t have been better than this. There is no denying of the fact about how beautiful she is but according to me, she did quite a good job with her acting as well. Jishhu Sengupta has always been a strong actor. And surprisingly, the dog did a great job too! I fell in love with Bingi!

Many people will not understand the concept of surrealistic cinema. May be this is the reason why Nirbaak is getting mixed reviews from every corner. When we see the tree having orgasm by seeing Sushmita sleeping on the bench under it, with her Dupatta flowing off her breasts and her locks brushing her face sensually, when we see Anjan Dutta kissing himself through the mirror and masturbating at night after having a lonely date with himself on his birthday, when we see Bingi, the dog, becoming suicidal after seeing her master getting drifted away from her, when we see Ritwick imagining going on a honeymoon with the corpse of Sushmita, the only thing which comes to our mind is that, can it be true? Do we ever think that our pet can really love us so much and might get hurt when we are not able to give him/her that much of time due to our other responsibilities? Do we ever try to know that the tree in that park which gives us shade every time we sit under it can fall in love with us? Isn’t it true that the way we can love ourselves, and the way we can be occupied with ourselves, we can never expect it from anyone else? Do we ever think that the guard of that morgue who spends most of his time with the corpse can actually fall in love with the dead body of a girl who was once a beautiful woman? No, we don’t! Because we are just too much preoccupied with the loudness of our lives! We seldom get time to think and search for words in the little moments of silence. We are too busy being busy and Nirbaak lets us break that loudness for a few minutes to be able to delve into that silence!

At a point the inner silence of the movie is so intriguing that we start questioning the reality. The discord of silence with reality is what Nirbaak is all about. Watch it not just for the sake of it. Watch it not because you have loved the previous Srijit Mukherjee flicks. Do not watch if you are expecting Anupam Roy songs. Watch it for it is not those so-called love stories intertwined with each other with a single ending. Watch it with an open mind and do not be judgemental about it before hitting the theatres. To sum it up, Nirbaak is another masterpiece by Srijit. It is a movie by which Srijit will be remembered to the generations to come.