Shabdo (2012)

‘Shabdo’ is the word in Bengali language for the word sound, which is apt for this movie as it deals primarily with Sounds and its effect for people who deal with it.

Sound is all around us, some which alert us like an alarm clock some which we just ignore nor never pay attention too like a rotating of the fan on the ceiling. humans are very selective about the sounds we give attention to. some are ignore instinctively while some deliberately.

the Movie follows the life of a Foley Artist, Tarak Dutta (Ritwick Chakraborty) who has become obsessed with sounds as his profession is so closely related to it. for those who don’t know what Foley is, in movies lot of noises you hear are not captured when the film itself is being shot, thus someone has to add these sounds into the film once the film is shot. this people are called Foley artist, for eg. sounds like someone walking or falling down are not necessarily captured while shooting so these sounds get recreated in a studio so that us audience get a better audio for such actions. the movie follows Tarak’s growing obsession to sounds and him getting distracted to various sounds around him even when people are talking to him. this causes his wife (Raima Sen) to consult a Doctor (Churni Ganguly) for him, who tries her hardest to relay the gravity of the situation to Tarak, he stays in denial. this only worsen his as time progresses his mind is tuning out human noises and concentrating more on the generally ignored ones. at one point unable to cope with the sounds Tarak even attempts suicide, luckily gets saved. this makes him come to a realisation that he is unwell and in put into rehabilitation, where he is made to hear recorded human sounds to bring him back to reality.

the movie is a masterpiece, touching onto a subject so closely related to the movie industry and portraying the life of such artists. The way the movie is Directed is values every little sounds made to allow the audience to understand and connect to the protagonist on how he views the sound and how he tunes human voices out. Ritwick Chakraborty does such a fantastic job of portraying the character obsessed with sounds that at points even us try to understand his views on sounds and its intoxicating effects. thus it wasn’t surprising to know this film won the 60th National Film Awards for Best Feature Film in Bengali.

my favourite or most interesting scene was, at one point tarak notices a difference in sounds made by cup when its kept on a table when full, and empty. he then tell this information to his colleague who checks it out by himself and gets fascinated, later in movie we get to see his fascination to sounds evolving into something kinda like obsession as we see him staring into a washing machine that is working and being immersed in its sound while his phone keeps ringing. we get to see that this condition isnt something only Tarak can have but something that can effect anybody and that part of the movie is what is fascinating to me.

i would recommend this movie surely but its not a movie that will sit well to everyone but even then i would say give it a watch who know it might fascinate you too. a tag of masterpiece and rating of 8/10.

29 movies down…….471 to go.

see you soon

Bidāẏa (Bengali for goodbye)