Top directors laud Gandhi’s Ship

Rejoice. And hail the emergence of a truly exciting director who has created a watershed moment in our cinema. Anand Gandhi’s Ship of Theseus is one of the most profound, imaginative and clever films to come out of India in recent times.

Gandhi has, with the help of the magnificent Kiran Rao, shown us what an uncompromising talent can overcome. That you can deliberately do away with every crutch that our cinema will not let go of, every excuse that it hides behind — and yet reach out to your audience.

Without getting dramatic, this could well be the start of a gradual cinematic revolution in India — for film-makers and for us, the audience.

When was the last time an Indian film made you think this profoundly about who you are and what makes you who you are? That every aspect of film-making came together in such an epiphany?

This film’s greatest victory is that it doesn’t even feel like a film at times — so unnoticeably yet startlingly real is it, drawing you so gently yet powerfully into its ideas.

And the best part for me was: It does all of this with an incredibly light touch and unexpected humour. Much like Gandhi himself, who has none of that self-consciously, pretentiously intense attitude that afflicts most films and film-makers who take on the big questions. There are great inner conflicts but little drama in this film. And despite the life-changing thoughts that it might implant in your brain, it ends on an elegiac, life-affirming note. It is inspiring proof that you can make a deeply thought and felt film refreshingly accessible.

Enough praise has been heaped on the film all over the world. But what is far more significant for us is that Indian filmmakers, from Karan Johar to Rajkumar Hirani to Dibakar Banerjee, have added their voices, sparking hope that the mainstream will get a little more courageous. (Dibakar Banerjee’s piece on the movie — do Google it — says it all.)

You cannot but respect film-makers like Hirani, Banerjee and Anurag Kashyap, who have admitted that this film shamed them. Here’s Hirani: “It feels that the kind of cinema that we have been making so far is so inconsequential and small.” Kashyap: “The most brilliant film to have been made in India in decades. Puts all of us to shame.” Banerjee: “ Ship of Theseus gave me serious doubts about myself as a film-maker. I seriously introspected for two-three days about my thinking as a filmmaker.”

And one of India’s greatest actors, Naseeruddin Shah added in the same vein, “The truthful conviction of every character in Ship of Theseus is what, as an actor, I have long striven for and never quite achieved! The actors deserve a standing ovation.”

Anand Gandhi has with this uncompromising, small-budget, no-known-faces movie challenged all the parameters of contemporary film-making. Not just with his cinematic vision and courage but even in the grittier world of distribution and theatrical release. He has worked incredibly hard to take his film to his audience, not in the conventional ‘promotional’ way, but by initiating a conversation with viewers, with intelligence and sheer legwork.

In their effort to reach the widest possible audience, Kiran and Gandhi did not give themselves a marketing budget that exceeded the cost of making the film (as some low-budget films have). They took their cause to the people with the online ‘Vote for your city’ campaign that urged viewers to vote for the film to be shown in their city. As Gandhi puts it on their Facebook page, it is “a democratisation of cinema, where audiences decide what they want to see”. A strategy that is as path-breaking as the film it promotes. And, joy, it has worked! With votes pouring in, the list of cities in which the film will release is growing steadily.

For too long, production houses and distributors have decided what films we will watch, without ever making an attempt to find out if there is a market for this kind of cinema. This holds out much hope for other film-makers and audiences… that this kind of epiphany will occur oftener now. You could argue that Anand Gandhi has been lucky to have got Kiran Rao to push his film so wholeheartedly and magnanimously. But the flipside to that argument is that Kiran came on board because she was, like all of us, simply overwhelmed by his audaciously brilliant film. Talent has triumphed.

Kiran and her husband Aamir Khan have (individually) promoted non-formulaic cinema with films like Peepli Live , Delhi Belly , Dhobi Ghat , and now Ship of Theseus . The question here is: Does mainstream cinema have a moral obligation to support independent cinema? There can be no simple answer to that because there are such convincing arguments on both sides, but my stand has always been that every film has to earn its audience. Support — from the industry, government or the audience — cannot be seen as an entitlement; it has to be earned. Cinema, being the hugely collaborative effort it is, owes it to all those involved to ensure that it finds an audience.

That is what Anand Gandhi, Kiran Rao, UTV and PVR Cinemas and we, the audience, have together done. The creative success of Ship Of Theseus belongs to Gandhi and his team, who have made this film so uncompromisingly, without an eye on the commercial aspect. The commercial success belongs to everyone. We get the cinema we deserve. And Ship Of Theseus has shown us how to earn it.

As Gandhi has put it on the film’s Facebook page, “The moment is beyond the film now. If enough people go to the cinema halls to watch Ship of Theseus , we’ll change the cultural environment.”

shashibaliga@gmail.com

COMMENT NOW