I feel film-makers are challenged much more than, say, artists, to go beyond senses. While an artist can distort or depict what he paints in order to enhance a message, a film-maker has to use imagination alone to make us feel something beyond the mundane inputs of sight and sound. I feel Anand Gandhi's directorial venture achieved this superbly.
The film actually reels out in three unrelated stories. In the first story of the girl who is a blind photographer, Gandhi tries to take us to the girl's sensory world through depictions of surface textures. When she gets her sight back through a cornea transplant, the live visuals overwhelm her. How does a director make us suddenly overwhelmed with visuals which we as audience had been seeing all the time? He skilfully uses sound cacophony at a street crossing as a proxy to generate this. Actress Aida El-Kashef does a great job depicting a strong-willed girl going through a process of letting go of her familiar blindness.
In the second story of a monk who is fighting a PIL against animal testing, he comes to a crossroad when he is required to undergo a liver transplant where he would have to take a lot of medicines produced by companies using animal labs. His conflict is obvious and he decides to withdraw to death by starvation but cannot go through it finally. The takeaways of this episode are mostly existential questions that he discusses with a rebellious protege. Neeraj Kabi (of recent Pataal Lok journalist fame) is excellent as the monk, although his personality does not develop very well in the film. Some of the visuals of his walks in Mumbai and of breeze ruffling through green fields as a representation of his conciousness are stunning. Pankaj Kumar's cinematography deserves a bow.
The third story is of a man (enacted by Sohum Shah) who has received a kidney transplant and who tries to help a labourer who has been robbed of his kidney. This is much against his nature as he is a very self-centred stockbroker in his normal life. This is a faster-paced narrative than the earlier two and has more story elements. Here again, the visuals of Mumbai slums, the climb through the super-narrow stairs with a tracking camera (I had no idea that the slums have such a strong vertical structure) is awe-inspiring camera-work.
No doubt there are weaknesses in the film. Some of the story-telling is lax and stretches logic. Some of the characters are not well-developed. But for this film, I was willing to forgive those flaws because of the great immersive experience the film put me through. The first episode may seem super-slow but after I put out of my mind a possible comparison with Sholay, I realised that this IS the pace of life and my mind also slowed down enough to ask at various points "Hey, what's happening here?" or exclaim "Aha, that's nice.". If you are looking for a pure entertainer, this is not the film for you. However, if you want to stop a bit and think, please do see this film. For me, a film is successful if I recollect bits and pieces the next day, either to appreciate or to rethink - and Ship of Theseus made me do both.
For those who are wondering at the title, it is explained in the beginning that the Theseus Paradox, stated by Plato, asked that if Theseus had changed all parts of his ship plank by plank, did it still remain the original ship? And if someone rebuilt a ship out of the parts, did it become the original ship? As you may have guessed, the theme of this film is organ donation and the Ship of Theseus is an allegory.
There are some films which make you think, while giving a nice output on screen. Ship of Theseus is one of those.
