SHIP OF THESUS (My review)

For my “normal“ mind, Ship of Thesus is my first “art” film. If not for Anurag Kashyap’s persistant tweets about this movie, like literally dozen’s of them everyday, I would have never watched this movie. Because, hey!!! I am the normal audience. I rarely get to watch smart movies in our culture. They don’t even make it to the screens in most of the towns in the first place. And the big city audience simply rule them out as art films. They simply cant sit through those long endless shots of raw beauty, through those philosophy lectures of life, death, soul and what not, and are least interested in investing their minds to follow what the movie is trying to say. I don’t blame them. Because, i can’t sit through them too. No one can sit through a movie which is not engaging enough. I rather prefer escapist entertainment which makes sense to me than a movie which sounds like my professor’s lecture on “deeper” things.

So i entered the theatre not knowing what to expect from Ship of Thesus. Then started the magic of Anand Gandhi, the director. It started with stating the thesus’s paradox, a theory or more of a question on which this movie is based: Does a ship, whose every part has been replaced piece by piece, remains the same ship in the end? My 22-year old “normal” mind understood that much. But it also said, “ wow, this is something i never thought of”. Well, i guess that’s why this question was intriguing enough for Anand Gandhi to make a movie out of it. It cannot be answered, but Gandhi showed us that it can realised. And the way he does that is what that got a “normal“ 22 year old like me hooked on to the movie for the entire three hours.

Anand Gandhi chooses to realise this theory through stories of three people: A blind photographer who is not satisfied with her work, An ailing monk risking his life and liver to stand on his perception of humanity and a stock broker guilty of his kidney transplant. All these characters undergo organ transplants. And as the stories gently unfold, i started to realise that this not your average art film that bores you. This is a film that sucks you in with its mesmerizing hand-held camerawork, which walks along with its characters, gives us an atmosphere to be in and haunts the characters along their journey through vast windfarms, cramped slums and gloomy corridors. This is a film that constantly questions your conceptions of humanity, argues with your beliefs and faith, and intelligently engages you into the characters’ conversations, which i think are the most interestingly thought-provoking ones I’ve ever seen in a movie. Last time I remember enjoying this much by listening to dialogues was while watch Quentin Tarantino’s movies, but off-course they deal with entirely something else. What astonished me even more is, the way most of these In-depth arguments between the characters are written with at-most simplicity and clarity, hence making the movie more accessible to “normal” audiences like me. And all those stories and conversations are set in the raw streets of Bombay, and the splendid cinematography gives us a nice lived-in feel of the world these characters live, a world with which we all can relate to.

But the actual thing that had me wanting to take a bow for Anand Gandhi is the way he managed to soak all the three stories with the metaphor of Thesus’s paradox, where a person serves as the ship and his bodily organs serve as the ship parts. Does a person who receives others organs still remain same person? Can the blind photographer with someone else’s eyes be as good as she was when she was blind? Can a monk still stick to his definition of humanity after discarding it once to save himself? And all these stories are finely tied to one string of pleasant climax which satisfyingly serves in completing the arch of the movie with respect to its central idea. Though the movie shifts to foreign locations once, it does not stray from its tone. The lead characters are portrayed by wonderful performances, notably by Neeraj Kabi as monk. He transforms into an ill ailing patient ala Christian bale in machinist and delivers the best performance in the most crucial role of the most important part of the movie. In some scenes, he remained of Mahatma Gandhi, both in his humbleness and his stubbornly uncompromising will power to stick to his belief. This wonderful screenplay not only presents you the gritty side of the subject but also infuses a little humour and emotional tension too.

Ship of Thesus is one of the rare movies that made me gather patience to sit through the super long single take shots, open my mind and follow all the complex of arguments and theories, which I usually try to avoid, with complete attention. I hope this rare gem prevails in the cobweb of India Cinema and make our heads high on international stages. Beware of the people who walkout of the theatre in the middle and post rash comments about this movie on Facebook. Yes’ this movie has its budget constraints hence has those little faults like pedestrians in roads looking into camera etc. But those are the people who paid attention to these little “technical” details rather than following what characters are going through and what their thoughts and words are pointing at. This movie is something more than its technical values. It’s more about the basic values of us, the humans. Go watch this movie with an open mind and you’ll come out puzzled on your own apprehensions on things around you and amazed on how Anand Gandhi unfolds an entire movie that constantly taps your conscience through three different stories and yet echoes that one question at the back of your head, the question that puzzled Thesus himself.