Release date:
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July 19, 2013
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Director:
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Anand Gandhi
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Cast:
Language: |
Aida El-Kashef, Neeraj Kabi,
Sohum Shah, Faraz Khan, Vinay Shukla, Sameer Khurana, Amba Sanyal, Rupesh
Tillu, Mats Qvistrom
English, Hindi
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What’s astounding about writer-director Anand Gandhi’s debut feature is how simple and basic it is. Don’t be misled by the title into assuming that this is an esoteric film. It's not. That a story with such profound philosophical underpinnings could lead to a film so simple, so small, so unpretentious, so sweet and yet... so endearing, so entertaining, so humorous and so intriguing would be inconceivable to most. But it is… all this.
At a skeletal level, Ship of Theseus brings together three
disparate stories. A celebrated photographer in Mumbai gets a corneal
transplant to cure her blindness, and finds herself dissatisfied with her work
once her sight returns. Elsewhere, a monk of a not-completely-specified
religion is fighting a court case against cruel methods of animal testing in
the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries. When he is diagnosed with a fatal
illness, he must choose between his principles and the very people he is
battling. In another corner of the city, a seemingly self-serving young
stockbroker hears of a kidney transplant scandal soon after he himself has
received a new kidney. This leads him to take up cudgels on behalf of a poor
man whose organ was stolen by racketeers, a fight for which he travels all the
way to Sweden.
The story of the lenswoman Aliya (played
by the talented Egyptian actress-filmmaker Aida El-Kashef) is perhaps the most
literal and direct exploration of the film’s title. The Paradox of The Ship of Theseus refers to questions of identity examined by world
philosophers for centuries that can be reduced in barest terms to this:
if an object has had every single one of its components replaced, does it remain
the
same object? The root of the question comes from
the ship sailed by the mythical Greek warrior Theseus, preserved by Athenians for
centuries by replacing parts that decayed over time. The much-derided 1999 Val
Kilmer-Mira Sorvino-starrer At First
Sight had visited Aliya’s dilemma, though differently, via the real-life
story of a blind man who could not cope with vision once it was restored to him
through surgery. That film was panned by critics at the time, but should nonetheless
not be discarded since it raises vital
issues about perception and seeing. Aliya’s track in Ship of Theseus is much less about practical concerns relating to
the restoration of sight though, and far more about how it impacts her instinctive
art.
From Aliya to Maitreya the monk
(Neeraj Kabi) and the unlikely activist Navin (Sohum Shah), the stories seem to
get progressively more satisfying, until you realise that they’re designed to
appear that way before they culminate in a completely unexpected and deeply moving
climax. The brilliance of the acting and Arushi Nayar’s casting lies in the
fact that the leads and the supporting players all come across as people who
walked straight out of real life and into this film. Theatre actor Neeraj
Kabi’s physical transformation to portray Maitreya’s decline is remarkable as
is the conviction with which he plays a monk who is not the distant creature we
assume all religious folk would be. Indian films tend to portray priests, nuns
and monks as unreal people on pedestals, living away from the laity. While this
is no doubt often the case, it is also true that there are Maitreyas aplenty in
this world, which is why his conversations with his feisty, cynical and
affectionate young lawyer Charvaka (Vinay Shukla) are so endearing. The pick of
the principal cast for me though is Sohum Shah – the film’s handsome co-producer
– who effortlessly portrays Navin of the gentle façade, camouflaging a man of
grit far removed from his grandmother’s perception of him. In fact, it strikes
you that we are a nation of truly good-looking people when Ship of Theseus – so many worlds away from the country’s mainstream
commercial cinema – casually throws up a Sohum and a Rupesh Tillu (in the small role of Navin’s sweet-faced little friend in Sweden) and a Faraz Khan (who plays Aliya’s very
attractive partner Vinay). Now onward to more serious matters…
Ship of Theseus has a quiet feel to it – in part due
to its clever placement of music and the use of silences between lively
conversations, but largely due to the magnificent starkness of DoP Pankaj
Kumar’s work. That the Swedish and Indian countryside would look lovely through
a cameraperson’s lens is no surprise. Kumar however makes even grimy, grubby,
over-crowded Mumbai a canvas of artistic merit, filled with energy and warmth
and, in one particular scene in the narrow bylanes of the city’s poorer
quarters, poignance laced with humour.
Anand Gandhi’s screenplay is derived
from a story co-written with Khushboo Ranka and Pankaj Kumar. That he is a
master with the pen and the directorial baton is evident from his eloquent
debut. Ship of Theseus is rich with
relationships, not the least of them being the relationship with the self... Aliya
alone in a room poring over her photographs once she can “see”… Vinay’s
struggle to help her without being patronising… Charvaka and Maitreya cracking
PJs with each other… An elderly Swedish gentleman wrestling with his
conscience… There is no moralising here, but each of these individuals compels
us to talk to ourselves about our notions of life and existence. What specifically
are the questions raised by Ship of Theseus, did you ask? Well,
that’s the point. It depends on who’s watching. Go find out for yourself.
Rating (out of five): ****1/2
CBFC Rating (India):
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U/A
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Running time:
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140 minutes
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