Watching a movie at a late hour has always been a special experience. For me it has been a feeling associated with freedom. A time when the crowd doesn't regulate the way you move. Add to this a feeling that borders on fear and the small pulses of courage that we comfort ourselves with.
The first “midnight movie” I watched was a Kannada tearjerker called 'Maduve'. The horribleness of it all, causing the viewer to be crushed by so much self-pity that he couldn't even feel for the heroine being tortured by a psychotic husband.
After college, having a job meant that one needn't worry about the money nor the excuses at home to watch a movie at midnight (paapa, IT/BT-nalli eshtu kelsa madistare!!).
Of all my bailout contributions to the movie industry, probably the only one that I certainly won't regret was Anurag Kashyap's 'Gulaal'. I can still recall how the tone of the movie (dark) and the songs (haunting) affected our (Me, Prasanna & Praveen, as usual) walk through the perceivedly shady alleys of Tavarekere.
Oh did I just digress? Perhaps I did. Perhaps, it's because an Idea is such a potent parasite. The most memorable midnight movie shall ever be Christopher Nolan's Inception. What a movie!
As TR would put it: Inception is an exception to routine film-making which is a deception of audiences aiding the conception of even more stupid films leading to corrrruption of the society. Oh! and he would put in "blaaaady bawsterd" and "Tamizh values" somewhere.
Much has already been said and much more will be said about the movie's writing, screenplay, editing and the performances. I'll just congratulate the genius that is Christopher Nolan and talk about what I liked about the movie and what I didn't. Ever since I came to know that Nolan is the writer for the movie, he’s all that I’ve wanted to talk about.
The glimpses:
The trailers released for the movie (sometime in December) just emphasized the tagline that the mind is the scene of the crime. Even, IMDB’s plot synopsis was off the mark about what the movie truly is. NYT tells me that it was upon Nolan’s insistence that only a few details about the movie were revealed.
Ahhh! Saaar \m/
The Idea:
As I watched the movie, I kept thinking that the idea for the movie is truly original. Yet, it can be appreciated that this concept has been toyed with before. The idea that mind is a ball of clay waiting to be moulded is not entirely new. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind dealt with how the mind would react if a person’s memories were to be modified. The concept of dreams interfering with reality, taking forms and coming alive was key to the Japanese movie Paprika (Wiki).
Yet, Nolan’s Inception stands out on its own for the simple fact that it takes the whole concept of weaving a dream to new levels ( multiple and in fact, 5). This is what I liked most about the movie. The portrayal that the mind is an environment that processes inputs subject to certain constraints (possibly guided by the needs of evolution). It is a subtle metaphor for the Strong vs. Weak AI debate.
If Paprika were to be contrasted with Inception, it could be said that: while Paprika spans out (horizontally, so to say) the space between reality and dreams and melds one person’s dream with another’s reality, meanwhile Inception ascends vertically as a dream within a dream which potentially affects the person’s base reality.
Hat-tip to Mr. Nolan.
Mal’s character:
What transforms a good writer-director going “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” to an extremely good one (doing a Nolan) is the alternate plotline for Mr. Cobb. In one fell move it shows us the scary side of extraction and Inception, all the while gently tapping the fourth wall.
A woman who believes that reality is yet another dream. Not a rarity, perhaps :P
Take a bow, Saaar.
Doubts:
I shall resort to calling the scapes the folks are in by level numbers e.g. Reality/Plane –> 0, Kidnapping/Fall from bridge –> 1 etc.
1. It is said that, what happens in one level transcends to a higher level i.e free fall in level 1 => floating bodies in level 2. Doesn’t this mean that in subsequent levels they should still be floating?
2. Escape from levels: The movie tells us that to escape from a higher level to a lower one you need to get a jolt. While, the movie convinced me that they could escape from a few levels there were a few levels from which escape seemed impossible/difficult.
a. From level 5: Saito is in level 5 and in limbo. How does Cobb reach him and why hasn’t he aged? Still the user can make an assumption that Cobb himself is the totem for Saito and that he can make an arrangement with his goons for both of them. Or Cobb kills Saito, thereby ending his limbo, and is jolted by Saito’s henchmen.
b. Cobb’s escape from level 1: Perhaps the most baffling thing (surely for me) was Cobb’s escape from the level 1. As Cobb himself explains, the fall into water was the last “kick” they were supposed to receive. So how does he get out of this one?
Yet, considering that not once had a movie got me thinking this much, I must say:
SashtanganamaskaragaLu.
Ending:
That moment when everyone is expecting the spinning totem to fall and the screen mercilessly blacks out. Memorable. The entire theater went “Awwww!”.
Chatussagaraparyantam … Nagaravinda sharman ahambho abhivadaye.
Additional Links:
http://screencrave.com/2010-07-13/christopher-nolans-obsession-with-obsession/
Esoteric we may call sometimes some statements, but yet cannot resist to hear/read whats up for grasping and you always manage to leave us wanting for more. That is what I attribute as your uniqueness. :) (a genuine smiley)
ReplyDeleteSomethings you need to take for granted in this movie. Its the world he created, so he is the one who will define the rules:
1] According to him, they do not transcend multiple levels.
2] I think you are speaking of the limbo. Escape from the limbo as Cobb says is only death in the limbo. (So only Cobb and Mal kill themselves under the train.
a] Cobb being a totem to Saito is brilliant idea, as Cobb desperately wants Saito to return and make that call. I guess by looking at Saito's nearing death in level 3 Cobb assumes he must be dead.
b] Its simple, i dunno how you messed this up. A death in a limbo wakes you up directly into reality.
As per me, the whole thing was played inside Cobbs mind. May be Mal was right all the way long. Cobb's desperation to reach out to his kids made him create so many levels and dimensions that he lost track of the real world.
1] They do. They go from reality to kidnap+chase+fall from bridge using a dream. Then they go from here to one the next level, again in a dream.
ReplyDelete2b] No. Death in limbo will take you out of limbo from that level only. It's like a recursive function call.
@ The whole thing was played inside Cobb's mind.
This is something you are deducing on your own. If you're making that assumption then you can as well say that it needn't even be Cobb's mind, it could be anybody else.
As always Nag, you have something special up your "jacket",s sleeve.
ReplyDeleteIf Nolan was to read this post, he would definitely rerelease the movie with a special Director's cut. The idea of Cobb himself being a totem.. Good one machax.