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Nirbaak (2015)
Unforgettable Experiences of Silent and Unspoken Love
Love that cannot speak, speaks the loudest in its speechlessness- and so to summarize the film in these words, and yet it would be a gross formulaic understanding of what it offers. The complexity of relationships are not just abounded within some emotions; it is also the inter-relation among other characters, a veritable saga of love, self indulgence, hatred and obsession that push forth (or regresses?) the destiny of each characters. The film revolves around the story of four people (Samson. Rahul, Mritunjaya and an unnamed woman played by Sushmita Sen) and three speechless entities (dog, a tree and a dead person); their stories weaved through clever interconnections, offering different and personal perspective to their story. Also, it is the woman in the story who becomes the pivotal connector to all other destinies (including that of her herself). The first story is of a narcissist (Samson), who in his utter loneliness and with the death of his wife is trying to pull himself out of his excessive self indulgence by reading personality development books. The second story is of a woman, who is not ready to leave her city, for it is in here she finds her inner solace. Later, her love is reciprocated by a tree which showers bounties upon her as she sits under the shade of it. The third story is that of a couple ( Rahul and the same woman) who have moved to a new apartment, is met by the man's sulky and jealous dog, who develops a disliking for the woman. The last story of a morgue technician ( Mritunjaya) who gets obsessed with one of the recent corpses under his watch. Each story moves in a circle, and ends with a neat closure, and begins again, like the rondure movement of the cycle of birth and death.
The film is a very insightful and ingenious take on the nature of love, and demonstrates that love is not only the property of those who can speak.
Repulsion (1965)
A Disturbing Account and An Ingenious Take on Psychological Trauma
The movie is eccentrically brilliant in the sense that it explores the other side of human sexuality, not usually spoken or written about and hidden inside the invisible shutters in broad daylight. Polanski treats the complexities of human psychology through a dexterous storytelling and camera direction that meanders sinisterly through the anxious gaze of Carol ( the protagonist in the story). The film explores the disturbing manifestations of childhood trauma, much later in the life of the shy protagonist, Carol. It is with this narrative fidelity that the film exposes through a fortuitous unfolding of events the transformation of Carol from a shy girl whose generic repulsion towards men transmogrifies into heinous murders.
Her inability to confront the past precipitates into a complex web of phobias and absent-minded behavior. She shuts herself at her home severing all connections with the world that she knows is exclusively dominated by men. And yet the specter of man manifests her nightmares as a phantom figure who comes every night to rape and molest her. The ticking of bells, a transitory silence of voices at the moment of rape, cracking of walls, hands coming out of walls to grope her suggest the atrociousness of the event which cannot be expressed in any narrative medium. Polanski takes a creative swerve in representing the trauma time through these tropes, since no verbal medium is sufficient in reconstructing the event. Unlike other modern Hollywood production which solely relies on jump scares in producing the feeling of horror; this movie takes an ingenious take, not only in its storytelling of an irreparable traumatic event, but also promises an exceptionally spine chilling experience.