Nirbaak 2015

Affection: The film centers on a troubled figure portrayed by Anjan Dutt, a man whose mind fractures into multiple personas. He loves himself, speaks rarely, and moves through daily life playing several roles—husband, a writer composing letters to his deceased mother, and a presence that imagines intimate company. The opening scenes trace a birthday ritual in which he wakes, tends to his own needs with meticulous care, ventures out alone, and pores over a book titled Make Yourself Unforgettable while sitting in a park. In that same park, Sushmita Sen appears as a regular visitor who shares her own griefs, though most of their exchanges drift past the audience in hushed, almost inaudible tones. After a moment of connection, the protagonist offers a single truth: he tries to remind himself to “Love Yourself,” a line that lingers as a quiet refrain.

The day continues with a solitary birthday cake at a restaurant, where he cuts and savors the cake alone, smearing cream across his face as if surrounded by an imagined partner. That night, he returns home in a fog of intoxication and, within the privacy of his thoughts, acts out a sexual fantasy with a partner who exists only in his mind. The following day, a household accident in the bathroom leaves him with a severe head injury, and he is rushed to the hospital as the line between reality and fantasy remains blurred.

Lust: The story shifts to Calcutta, where [Sushmita Sen] is an author who loves her city deeply and is reluctant to leave it for her boyfriend, played by [Jisshu Sengupta]. Here, the protagonist reveals itself as a tree in the park, a surreal figure that becomes a witness to Sushmita’s life. The tree’s presence seems to eroticize the moment when Sushmita lies beneath its branches; in a dreamlike sequence, its physical form is depicted with a phallic element, and the scene is framed to suggest the tree’s voyeuristic gaze as she contemplates her future. The conversations between Sushmita and Rahul unfold, with the tree indirectly influencing their choices as the narrative drifts between desire and devotion. That night the tree dreams of Sushmita both as a dancing figure and as a commanding mistress, until Rahul gradually wins her confidence and she decides to live with him. A cyclone then strikes Kolkata, and by morning the tree’s branches lie broken, echoing the fragility of the moment.

Jealousy: In another city, when Sushmita arrives at Rahul’s flat, she faces an uneasy welcome from a dog named Bingi, a jealous companion who sees Sushmita as a rival for Rahul’s time and affection. Bingi attacks her, and Rahul, upon returning, lashes out at the dog. The couple resolves to leave Bingi with Rahul’s mother, but the dog’s attempt to flee triggers a car accident. Sushmita dies in the crash, Rahul falls into a coma, while Bingi survives, a silent witness to the distortions love and possession have wrought.

Love: Ritwick Chakraborty portrays Mrityunjoy Karmakar, a morgue caretaker who nurtures an obsessive love for the dead body of Sushmita. He clings to dreams of her as his life’s beloved, a fixation that grows as the day arrives when goons forcefully demand that he release a dead body to the group’s control. Ritwick resists, but the confrontation ends with him being beaten to death. In a close-up that lingers on a quiet, unsettling smile on the corpse, Sushmita’s body appears to acknowledge his devotion even in death, adding a macabre layer to the film’s meditation on longing.

Separation: The final tableau widens the rift between life and death. Ritwick’s character lies dead in the morgue, while Sushmita’s body is moved out for burial or transfer, underscoring the film’s thematic core: the bitter, irreversible separation that divides two beings once bound by an impossible kind of affection. A brief cameo by Srijit Mukherji as The Man with the Dog threads into this mosaic, reinforcing the film’s dreamlike, fractured texture.

The narrative slides through these intersecting vignettes—Affection, Lust, Jealousy, Love, and Separation—creating a heightened, surreal portrait of a mind that cannot easily tell apart reality from fantasy. The film remains, at its core, a meditation on longing and the ways desire is shaped by memory, mortality, and the stubborn silence of a person who clings to love in the most unusual forms.