Inception: A Movie or A Dream?!

Prologue.

There I sit on a Sunday afternoon aimlessly browsing the web. I get this feeling. A weird feeling all of a sudden, something’s incomplete, something is pending but I wouldn’t know what or why even I’m getting this thought. Amidst this confusion I open up IMDB to get my daily dose of  seeking knowledge on the movies. I look at the top movies and there it strikes like a lightning. I have to write a review on Inception! More than that I have to blog after a really long time. My friends keep cursing me for that and in an instant I log into my blog account expecting spider webs, butterflies out of cocoons and an inch of dirt on the dashboard of my blog page (digital fantasy of mine I guess). There I see it, my last post, posted ages ago in the month of October 2009, no wonder I got a feeling of incompleteness. I decide to pull myself together and start thinking on posting the review. After an hour or so, I commence…

“

I’ve got three questions before we begin, no big deal, just three:

When was the last time you woke up realising that it was only a dream?

When was the last time you felt that your dream was so real that you refused to accept reality after waking up?

When was the last time that you arrived at a solution to a real world problem within a dream?

Now answer these questions to yourself but you just can’t restrict your thoughts, thinking only about that time, can you? and the answers don’t just turn out to

be mere time references, do they?

I give you a complete autonomy to exercise your intellection on this.

So many thoughts erupting within my mind while I sat in the cinema hall watching Inception, something which had happened with me for the first time. I was immersed

in a mental debate, arguing with myself, exploring the possibilites. Thinking and rethinking from scene to scene. An experience I’ll never forget when I watched Inception for the first time. You would find two types of people. The ones who are completely bowled over by the movie’s brilliance and the ones who don’t understand it enough to apprecitate it, obviously disliking it. Only in the extremes but none in between. This post of mine, I would like to point out, may appear to be a review on Inception but it veritably is an apprecitation of the movie. I believe that I can’t review a movie of such high calibre! Although this post has been kept as spoiler-free as possible, reading it after watching the movie is recommended.

I’ve got this protocol of mine when watching movies which are eagerly awaited by me for their release, great movies I might add. The whole thing itself is a saga limited to my perception of it. The first obvious thing is that I watch the trailer. The trailer of Inception was pretty impressive having this strong and imperitive line: “What is the most resilient parasite? – An Idea!”, just giving clues about the movie rather than narrating a mini-plot like most of the trailers of other movies.

The next step is that I try to watch the other movies made by the director or the movies in which the lead actor has acted. But since I’m a huge fan of both Nolan and DiCaprio, I’ve watched almost all their movies many times over! I’ll be damned if I don’t mention The Dark Knight! So anyway I skipped the second part and eagerly awaited the movie’s release for close to six months! The third part is the best, I watching it. I was absolutely thrilled, elevated in excitement. Inception delivered more than what I expected from it. I’d like to argue against its comparison with The Matrix whcih is another favourite of mine. Both are masterpieces in their own exceptional way, concepts of which appear to be same on the surface but are entirely different when you dig in deep. The last part, I complete watching my awaited movie and the aftermath-never ending discussions about the movie with my friends which I thoroughly enjoy.

Inception portrays an idea, a thought and not a story I feel. This itself is one strong concept to tackle. It manoeuvres around the speculative topic of dreams and how one is affected by it. Christoper Nolan, who is the mastermind behind this chef-d’oeuvre, brings out the otherwise endless and complex concept of dreams in an understandable manner in the movie with a  delicate enigmatic influence in it. This leading to many interesting mental debates leaving you arguing with yourself and others around. No one watching it would be a mere viewer, it would bring out a thinker in him/her. The visuals are a treat, keeping Computer Graphics (CG) only at appropriate places as Nolan believes in capturing whatever’s required on camera and then enhancing the shots with CG. One attribute of using camera techniques instead of pure CG is that it is much more realistic to watch and gives the film a sense of integrity.

The process of casting plays a crucial role in movie making, to help understand its vitality imagine Schwarzenegger being casted as the male lead in the movie Titanic! The characters are brought out well by the all the actors, DiCaprio never fails to impress me with his performances.

The plot of the movie is direct but not simple. It is moulded into this sensitively complex idea which the movie stands for. Nolan has focussed more on conveying the essence, the idea behind the movie rather than its plot . The plot is layered. Three layers which are certainly hierarchical and one more independent layer, elaboration of which is irrelevant within the frame of this post. Its not just any other science fiction movie. It belongs to a rare genre of  thought induction, which itself is something to ponder upon. Definition of a dream from wikipedia says that a dream is a succession of images, sounds or emotions that the mind experiences during sleep. When we are awake our mind takes input from the real world while in a dream the input is from itself. The mind creates and perceives its own world in a closed loop, which is another ingenious observation brought out in the movie. And as far as the story goes it is better to keep it within the walls of the theatres if you know what I mean!

A great background score can make significant difference in a viewing experience. The score by the living genius Hans Zimmer is very much the way it used to be; unique, sublime and aesthetic. It quite literally makes you relate with parts of the movie when you listen to the soundtracks separately. Now there lies its success! I particularly liked “Non, Je ne regrette rien” by Edith Piaf, a french classic, the song which the characters use to synchronise their process of waking up from a dream.

In summary, Inception creates a landmark in cinema. It stands as a stupefying accomplishment and sea change in storytelling and cerebral cinema. A must watch, a multiple watch movie I should say! I had this unusually pleasant perplexed state of mind when I exited the cinema hall after the first time viewing. One can have a pretty good understanding after watching it many times over but never a complete understanding which is actually the best part of this movie experience. The swirling cities, unusual landscapes and flying objects are certainly attention worthy but the film’s genuine strengths are its mathematical, realistic and mystic ventures into the mental territory, and its sophisticated execution, which confides upon the brainpower of the audience.

You don’t just watch Inception. You experience it!

“

Epilogue.

Finally there it was, after a long time there was sunshine and I was out of my hibernation! I had completed the draft of the review of one of the most brilliant movies I had watched in recent times, just one more step and I was done. I clicked the publish button. one click, two clicks, three clicks, endless multiple clicks?! It just wasn’t getting posted! I tried to refresh the page repeatedly but nothing seemed to work. At this jucnture a panic button within me was struck. I had put up a sincere effort in breaking my baseless self declared strike on blogging due to sheer ignorance and now everything was collapsing! I hit the interrupt keys, Ctrl+Alt+Delete as a last resort only get more disappointed. Even the interrupt keys weren’t responding. Curses! Before I could digest what happended, Poof! my blog page got closed, it just disappeared! Total devastation. All of a sudden “Non, Je ne regrette rien” starts playing on my PC?! as if I had lost control of my PC. I was dumbstruck. The volume of the song kept increasing with every second till it was painfully unbearable. I decided to pull the plug, I tried to reach for the plug, with pain in my ears but no, I somehow couldn’t reach it as though my hand had frozen in mid air! I tried hard, harder and even harder with the song getting louder and louder….. and then what happened?!

And then I WOKE UP!

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