When I was leaving the cinema hall, one question was poignantly flashing in my mind, what the film was really about? Was it just the Theseus’s paradox or a curious inquiry of Plutarch? Was it just a visual extension to classic 20 marks question asked to literature students or razor sharp paradox disguised under the pluralist culture and society of India? Was it the story of conflict of ideologies, the self, the existence and the belief or was it the visual commentary on the world which we have not seen, understood and experienced?
Welcome to The “Ship Of Theseus” – a journey of conflicts, a space for inquiry & reason and a deep dive into Being and Nothingness.
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1. Aaliya Kamal, the visually challenged and celebrated photographer, undergoes the cornea transplant and gets her vision back.
2. Maitreya, a Jain monk, who is fighting to ban animal testing in laboratories across India, when diagnosed with liver cirrhosis, refuses to take medicines due his ideology and conviction of nonviolence & reverberation of Karmic theory.
3. Navin, a young stockbroker, who had undergone kidney transplant, finds the poor man, Shankar, whose kidney was stolen under the huge kidney transplant racket, investigates further and decisively reach to the core of the kidney transplant tourism.
[I know the statements written above seems little confusing because of their length and no. of commas used, but] This is the 3-line story of Ship Of Theseus. Is it really a great story? Or as someone said is it really a “hidden gem of the year”? Certainly yes, not because of the story but because of the holistic cinematic experience which Anand Gandhi & Team has painted on celluloid (or digital sensor? I don’t know!).
Story 1:
Aaliya is extremely sensitive to the surrounding. Does she see the world through her senses other than the eyes? I doubt. Other senses are just the instrument to collect information, what she really has is her imagination and ability to produce vivid imagery on her imaginative canvas. She hear every little sound, she identifies colours of curtain, she experiences light and shadow, she imagines the action and tells her subject to enact the same.What does she actually do? She imagines. Her ability to imagine a vibrant visual is her real strength.
Aaliya’s sightlessness and power of imagination have been depicted brilliantly when her assistant gives her every single detail and the camera keep moving around her face. The image is visible to the assistant but not to us (and so as to Aaliya) forces viewers to imagine the photograph. That’s where lie the genius of Aaliya. This particular sequence touched me the most (from that story) as it really put me in the place of Aaliya.
Another sequence when Aaliya gets back her vision and goes to capture the city. is also a beautiful cinematic experience. Aaliya is under the over bridge. The background sound plays hurriedly, bit and pieces of sound is juxtaposed with the very short shots of street life, movements on the road, people and vehicles around, which depicts the way Aaliya perceives the newly born world (loaded with thousands of images and motion pictures). She cannot hear the sound with the meticulosity with which she used to hear before. Did she loose the power which she had? Is she the same imaginator – the same photographer – the same Aaliya?
Story 2:
The unseen Mumbai is beautifully and courageously portrayed in the story of Jain monk, Maitrey. The smile and the Sahaj Bhaav (I am sorry, i can’t find the exact English word for the same) of Maitrey is iconic. But the dialogues delivery seems little artificial. It seems someone is mimicking and trying to speak “monklike”. The visual Sahaj Bhaav is not evident in his voice and dialogue delivery, which was the biggest disappoint to me in this story.
The monk seemed to be very quiet, peaceful, internally settled, calm and composed, still when he put forward his idea it seemed like a flow of river, which just keep going without a conscious decision and a thought. Was that the conflict of existential reality and the ideology of monk? Was his calm and composed being was his reality or his ideological podium? Camera had a constant horizontal movement which again referred the celerity of thought and ideas of the monk. [Those visuals reminded me of Attenborough’s visual treatment to Gandhi. Spectacles of monk was similar to that of Gandhi. Was it a subtle point of reference to Gandhi as well?]
The story is visually stunning. The close up of about to die monk, the smoothed visual of Prarthana Sabha (Prayer Hall), the streets of Mumbai, Matunga Road station pavement, laboratories, close up of the animal in the laboratory (once again by close up shots of rabbit, Anand succeeded to make me feel what actually the animal testing is all about, how that rabbit must have felt when it was forced and being tested). Moreover, architecture has been used as the character in this story [the window and the bell shaped door where the sick monk lies and couple of other shots were strengthening the story]. Here once again the sound plays a major role to internal psyche of character, it’s like “POV Sound”! The first time when the monk felt extreme abdominal pain, the background sound of prayer, preaching and surrounding faded out. The sequence when the monk is about to die was the best moment as far as the portrayal of sound is concerned.
One more striking aspect of the story was a young restless, rational, frank, fearless inquiry of a young man and the still, ideological, courageous and self-righteous stance of an old monk! The constant debate and discussion was a wonderful experience for me. The wide shot comprised (where monks were walking through) the narrow road – situated in a wind farm and the shadow of the huge windmill, was the most brilliant moment, stirring the adrenaline of intelligentsia. The shot was followed by the intense discussion on birth, rebirth and karmic theory. The wind farm and the shadow over Jain monks left me with several questions. What is life? What is death? Was windmill a metaphor of cycle of birth, death and life? Something is bound to happen, the wheel of time will keep rolling, what you need to do is to walk, to smile and to be harmonious. This one shot was the essence of the entire conflict with the self and the existential reality of human beings (that’s what I felt).
Story 3:
This was the most accomplished story. The way it unfolds herself had a womanly mystery, warmth, conflict, aggression and realization. The ambitious stockbroker – the idealist social worker, the grandson and the grandmother, the new and the old, the capitalist thought and the Nehruvian ideology, the service to self and the service to society, the individuality and the collectivism, the vyashti and the samashti. The ideation of these character per se was a major achievement of this story. The single shot sequence when Navin facilitates her grandmother, the single shot where poignant silence of Navin becomes a prolonged suppressed outburst, the sequence at Sweden, the sequence where Navin and his friends struggle to find the Shankar and many more was absolutely fantastic.
Contradiction of the city and our society have been captured beautifully in this story. The space which is a street for one class of people is merely a car for the other class of people. Amen! The grandson who doesn’t believe in his grandmother’s ideology, heartily takes care of her. Look around, do we really have such people who can distinguish between the mind and the body? Between the intellect and the emotion? The utterly spacious bright landscape of Sweden from where Navin calls and the narrows shadowy dark lane (space between two houses) where Shankar receives the call. Navin who is little concerned about the social work is having extreme guilt for his kidney (which was assumed to be stolen from the poor man). Navin’s crazy and courageous search of kidney (justice and truthfulness), Swedish gentleman’s (?) settlement (Cognitive Dissonance – Jugaad) and Shankar’s acceptance of the same (satirical reality of life). Absolutely brilliant ending! Oscar Wilde would have loved this story (for its stark depiction) for sure and so as O’Henry (for its tersity).
The movie ends with the man (who was the donor of cornea, liver and kidney to Aaiya, Maitrey and Navin) exploring (may be the self and existence) the deep caves (may be life and the world) where his existence is his shadow (is that the tribute to Plato’s flickering shadows from The Republic) and his identity is multidimensional (is that the tribute to Jainism’s Anekantavad) and plural reality of Aaiya, Maitrey (not a monk anymore) and Navin.
[I don’t feel like writing more, I am done, but my mind is asking, is it a proper ending? And the self answers, does everything has a proper ending? What actually is a proper ending? What is an ending? Something which ends? Or something where we stop starting a new thing? The long story short. This is The End.]
Unsophisticated Journals 