Ship of Theseus – Movie Review

Directed by Anand Gandhi

Cast – Aida El Kashaf, Neeraj Kabi, Sohum Shah

Rating – 9/10

There is a 45 seconds scene in the movie where we see a caterpillar crawling on the floor with shoes passing by and over it. Each time, a shoe comes on the screen, you cringe and pray for its life. The debate that follows this scene leaves you dumbfounded. That’s the magic of ‘Ship of Theseus’. And this is just one of the innumerable such sequences that the movie oozes with. Anand Gandhi, who wrote the overtly dramatic Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki, the two serials that defined an era of India television and audience alike, directs the most thought-provoking and intelligent Indian film that has come out in the last couple of decades or more.

The movie starts with a written explanation of the paradox of Ship of Theseus and extends it to its own benefit. And then we are presented with three stories – about a blind photographer, a monk fighting for animal rights and an ordinary man who investigates his own kidney transplant. I will not open up the plots more than this because of three reasons. First, it will not do justice to your experience of watching the film. Second, the stories are not as important as their treatment and constituting debates, and third, they are out there on the internet. You can read them.

With two enchanting songs, the vision of Mr. Gandhi is very extremely well supported by the cinematographer. Each and every frame of the movie has something to say, and if you are going to watch it on your computers, extract any frame out of it and it will make a brilliant photograph for your wall. In this context, watch out for the concluding show-reel of the first story. It’s a wide-frame stationary minute-long shot of a Himalayan landscape towards the end of which, when the message strikes you with a heavy hammer, you will want to throw away your cameras.

The performances are as perfect as they can get. You realize that no other person could have played the role of any of the characters, lead or supporting, better than the ones who play them. The pick of the lot, undoubtedly is Neeraj Kabi. He redefines the whole idea of being perfectionist and a method-actor. You can see his transformation from an energetic and healthy to an ailing stick-bodied monk wondering how dedicated one has to be towards acting. And he does all of it while maintaining a smile and an intellectual glow so prominent that you might want to put a halo behind his head. Other actors, Aida and Sohum, too bring the kind of characterization very few in the industry can claim to achieve.

Having said much about the movie, let me make one point clear that this movie is not for the masses and it is definitely not entertaining as per the usually accepted definition. The most ‘entertaining’ is the one about the kidney transplant. The other two are pure and serious pieces of art. While coming out of the theatre, I saw a man literally pull his hair out crying how pathetic the movie was, and at the same time, I could see how awe-struck and satisfied many more, including myself, were at the effulgence of it all. The movie is not meant for just watching and having a good time with your friends. It demands a plate-full of concentration and a dollop of reasoning, garnished with the openness of the mind. In one of the scintillatingly executed scenes, a boy argues about ‘intellectual masturbation’ and ‘meaning of existence’ and in another brilliantly shot scene a man helps his bed-ridden grandmother urinate, and you see how effectively the Ship of Theseus sails along the wave of perfection moving from the crest of surreal poetic ideas to the trough of tribulations of reality. However, from the technicality point of view, a little more editing would have been amazing.

At the end of it, if you want an enriching experience and a movie that would become a classic in the coming years, go for it. Like the idea of the movie, you will question whether you are the same person who went inside the theatre. Think. It’s all is required and then the idea will strike you, like it did to me in the climax when the above-mentioned extended concept of the Ship materializes itself, and the movie-hall transforms into a mast and the audience, the lascars.