The film is an anthology of three tales ‘Like, Share, & Download’, uniquely distinct yet interconnected by the utter state of disarray they evoke. They hold up a mirror to the Internet reality that’s becoming of our lives where people have developed severe attention deficit as they seek instant gratification, where they are commodifying their lives and the lines between reel and real are blurred, and where AI exists as a not-so-distant entity but a very palpable antagonist threatening to take over our lives. In short, Banerjee’s film presents the naked truth of the modern-day dystopia, our current realities.

The film begins with the protagonist Noor, a transwoman who’s the emerging star of a Bigg Boss-like reality show Truth Ya Nach where contestants spend time streaming the majority of their lives to a live audience and gain votes. Noor knows she wants to win the show. So, actions in her personal life are crafted to titillate the audience. There’s a scene where she enters into a heated brawl with her estranged mother when the assistant director complains, “Aapke best moments na hamesha off-cam hi hote hain” following which they both play out the same sequence (violently) on camera.

Therefore, essentially everything you see on the reality show is actually a constructed reality for the larger world, as the authenticity slips away. Noor’s life is actually a performance. There’s no real element to it. Everything is weaved in accordance with what would capture the maximum eyeballs. A similar theme is explored with a more sinister twist in the third short film Download, which follows an 18-year-old YouTube streamer.

Gamer Paapi is your next-door 18-year-old YouTube sensation whose idea of entertainment is voicing slurs, being aggressive, and letting out an animated persona. Being another menace on the Internet is his content, and he’s got millions of people following him. There’s a larger conversation about the abundance yet mediocrity of content to have here. We’re ensnared in a universe where everybody is a creator who has an opinion and is reacting to stuff, and in the process, spewing their first base thoughts without caring for nuance. 

Such a universe also paves the way for superficiality. People aren’t the characters they play. Everything is an act. In the second short film, when another transwoman Kullu finds herself at odds in a system designed against her, her employer, who’s supposedly her ally, doesn’t bat an eye before crushing Kullu for her own sake.

LSD 2 is like Banerjee’s objective take on our skewed realities. As you watch the film, you may find it all over the place, you’d struggle to make sense of the plot, but you’d find it is held together by the frenzied state everybody is in.

Society, in general, and the Internet generation, in particular, lead a dual life. First is the projected self, a sort of misleading idyllic pretense people wanna hold up for the online spectators, the second one is the real-world physical self that only our family and close friends are privy to. The idea of identity itself is becoming more and more fragmented and scattered, and Banerjee’s film offers a satirical perspective over the same.

Any quest to rationalize actions and find meanings in the film will be pointless because the sheer meaninglessness of the present situation is the reality. We’ve embraced the madness. People are reaching extremities to build content, commodifying their lives, dehumanizing their actions, and then deriving a voyeuristic pleasure from it (often without realising).

So, LSD 2 does not make much sense…but perhaps, that’s the idea. It’s not supposed to make sense cos our internet-driven life doesn’t make sense.