Ship of Theseus: The greatest knowledge is knowing nothing

Tanviruzzaman Tonay:

Hello everyone, I am writing my interpretation of the movie called Ship of Theseus. The movie directed by Anant Gandhi often considered as one of the path breaking cinema in the history of Indian cinema is now enjoying a cult following. I personally fascinated with the forms and visualization of this cinematic experience.

Before talking about the movie I would like to discuss something about the ‘ship of Theseus’ paradox. We everybody knows who Theseus was but do not know about the paradox called Ship of Theseus. For example, the famous ship of warrior Theseus is now kept in a museum. It is made of wood and the woods are rotting day by day and the museum owner is replacing the woods with new one. At one point all the woods will be replaced by the new woods. And the ship will be a complete new one. Another example is that the scientist found a way to form the rotten woods in a new way and made another ship just like the real one at the end. Now the point is both the newly made ships will carry the essence of the real ship of Theseus. But, is it possible that the newly built ships have any resemblance in between? That means, A=B, A= C, but not B=C.

Now I would like to connect the story of the film. The film is parted in three different narratives. In the first narratives we are introduced with a young photographer who is blind and can capture photo by hearing the sound from the object. She is very much intuitive. After a cornea operation she got her eyesight back but cannot click pictures like before in an intuitive way. She is merely a regular photographer now who have eyesight. Like the paradox, she is completely a new being in the way of life. The next one is the story of a Jain monk who is an avid animal lover. He loves animal so much that he filed a writ petition against the pharmacy companies who uses animals like rats, genipigs to testify their medicines before using it on humans. He is now infected with lever cirrhosis and denied to take medicines since he is a man of principle. He will not take the medicines which are testified on the animals. So, he took the decision to die while fasting. During the time of his fasting, a student of him said that it will not make any impact on the world order whether he takes the medicines or not. Then he answered that the human conscience and his action has certainly impact on earth no matter how tiny it is. After a certain period he decided to take medicines for greater good. In the third story a young man namely Pravin got his kidney transplanted. After his operation he got to know that a man namely Shankar was due to operation and the doctors stole his kidney. Fearing that he might have having the kidney of Shankar, Pravin started investigating into the matter and landed to Sweden as the recipient of Shankars kidney is now living in Sweden. He made the Swedish man to pay Shankar. At last it is known that the donor of pravin’s kidney actually donated all of his body part and in total 8 people. At last an exhibition was held to introduce the eight recipients to their sole donor. Here we got to know that the photographer, monk and Pravin received their respective organs from the same donor. The movie ends with the donor’s shadow is roaming in a cave.

Now the point is that Gandhi used the ‘Allegory of cave’ given by Plato in his last sense. According to Plato, a man is living inside a cave chained and in front of him there is a blank wall. He is watching the shadow of people behind him. Actually, all the people or in Plato’s word prisoners are looking forward in a blank wall. They are confined  inside the labyrinth of their existence. They only can interpret things perceived by their senses. The donor is the prisoner who escaped from the cave and leant the analogy of son and the actual reality. In my sense, Anant Gandhi played with us. For him, the viewers are shackled who are engaged in a manufactured reality rather than the actual reality. He perceived the things from beyond the norms created by the society. It is quite applicable for his filmmaking as well. He made ‘Ship of Theseus’ as an enigmatic film with lots of allegorical take.

Now I would like to draw some core themes of the movie. I have seen this movie as a philosophy of making one’s own choices. It shows how the individual’s choice is important in his life in his self-made context. For example, at first the monk was not ready for taking medicines. But, at the end he took the decision to take the medicines by his own choice. Similarly, the blind photographer decided to remain intuitive while clicking picture.

The second point I perceived about this movie is ethics and morals. All the major characters were here true to the morals. The blind photographer who was impromptu while clicking pictures wanted true in his endeavor of clicking picture abruptly. The Jain monk was true in his principle against the pharmacist companies and Pravin was a compassionate man in his heart and helped Shankar.

The idea of soul was one of the major theme of this movie. We know that our actions can be made according to our context but the soul remains intact. If you are true human being you will remain true to your conscience.