Inception - Will Blow Your Mind!!!!

Inception is one of those few movies which not only offer the pleasures of sight and sound but tops it off with the intense pleasure of thought. It is a movie that will enthrall you if you enjoy ‘thinking’ the movie as much as ‘seeing’ the movie. If you thought Matrix was based on a complex idea, Inception will probably blow your mind. It is a movie which having prior about the underlying thought the movie is based on will help some folks to sit back and enjoy the movie without having to tax their brains trying to understand ‘what the heck’ it is all about.

The movie is not just about dreams, the movie is about an idea, as Mr. Cob (DiCaprio) says "the single most potent thing in the world is a simple resilient idea that will not die". The sub-conscious human brain is so powerful that if you can get it to believe one very simple resilient idea, that idea can ‘define or destroy’ the person. ‘Shared dreams’ is just the media through which the idea is implanted into the mind of a person. The ideas implanted deep in ones ‘sub-conscious’ mind, if it is simple and resilient enough, will have consequences in the real world outside. The process of implanting this idea into the mind of the subject through multi-layered world of dreams is called ‘Inception’.

Mr. Cobb’s expertise is ‘Inception’. In the movie Mr. Cobb tries go into the world of ‘shared’ dreams to implant an idea into the sub-consciousness of an heir of a business empire that would ‘redefine’ his outlook and impel him to break-up his empire. A breakup of that business empire would benefit Mr. Cob’s client’s business conglomerate which otherwise would get swallowed up by the monopoly that the heir is trying to create. The problem with Inception is that once a person enters into the Freudian world of the sub-conscious, controlling the realities of that ‘shared’ dream world becomes difficult because the sub-conscious mind of the recipient reacts violently to the idea that is being implanted into it.

As Mr. Cobb’s mind dreams a reality where he can make the heir's sub-conscious gullible enough to allow him to place the idea in the heir’s mind, the heir’s sub-conscious mind works against Mr. Cobb’s to resist the control Cobb is seeking over his sub-conscious mind. So Cobb has to create a reality in the ‘shared’ dream world where the heir will make his own sub-conscious mind implant the idea into itself. To do this, Cobb needs to go into ‘nested dreams’ - multiple dreams within a dream. He recruits a team that will work with him in the new realities of the nested dream world. Controlling the complicated world of multi-layered dreams makes the movie super-exciting and original.

Though the concept of inception may seem alien to us as it involves manipulating dreams, it really is not. When Cobb and his team plan Inception on the heir, they strategize that “the idea needs to be implanted deep within the sub-conscious in such a way that the recipient believes that idea was actually his own…  so when we plant the idea, we need to give a ‘positive’ feel. We need to give him an 'emotional' connection” and make it appear that the 'positive' idea is his own. Doesn't this happen to us everyday in the TV ads? Don’t advertisers aim to implant brand names and images with a 'positive' feel about them? Don't these positive images have a big role to play when we do to the movie theatres and say, “hmmm I need a coke”?

The movie novel as it is, has so many aspects which are manifestations of the deeper truths and questions about life and human Nature. It delves into questions about advertising psychology to Freudian guilt complexes to Metaphysics of life. One of these questions I think is worth some appreciative contemplation… What makes the movie super-complicated and worthwhile is that Cobb has his problems with his own sub-conscious mind. Mr. Cob goes back and forth between the dream and the real world. When a person is in this business, he loses his ability to recognize what world is real, the dream world seems just as real. Mr. Cobb and Mrs. Cobb are a great loving couple, but they have a major difference of opinion. They are not in agreement about which world is the real one. Mr. Cobb thinks the world outside is real. Mrs. Cobb thinks the dream world is real enough. Mrs. Cobb actually gets back into what Mr. Cobb thinks is the real world, but kills herself thinking that it isn’t the real world, hoping to enter into another level of reality which would be more real. As Mr. Cobb goes into different levels in the dreams to implant ideas on behalf of his clients, his sub-conscious mind can’t help recreating Mrs. Cobb. The version of Mrs. Cobb his sub-conscious creates works against him to spoil his inception plans. The complicated love between the two adds a whole new level of mystery.

In the dream world, Mr. Cobb and Mrs. Cobb argue about what reality really is. They dabble over the question of Metaphysics. Mr. Cob says that though he enjoys playing God in the dream world creating his own realities, he can’t go on that way forever. Mrs. Cobb thinks differently. When Mr. Cobb says that the dream world they live in is not real, she replies, “You are talking about what you ‘know’, I am asking you to ask yourself what you believe and what you ‘feel’. Don’t you feel happy in this world”.

At a very deep level, the struggle between Mr. and Mrs. Cobb is a struggle between the modernists and the postmodernists and the pop-culturists. The modernists are rationalists. They believe there is ‘one’ truth which needs to be rationally pursued. The postmodernist believes that truth is what you think it is or make it to be, there is no ‘one’ truth to be pursued. The pop-culturists don’t give a hoot about reason or truth they want to have the ‘Black Eye Peas’ kind of ‘good time’. Mr. Cobb is the modernist who thinks there is ‘one’ real world where their children really are waiting for them. He thinks, 'where Truth is there his real Home will be, for his children will really be waiting there'. Mrs. Cobb is a postmodern pop-culturalist. She has a ‘good time’ in the dream world and is satisfied with the version of children her sub-conscious mind has created for themselves in the dream world. After all, it does not matter whether it is real or not as long as it is ‘feels’ good right? Or, maybe not?

This is the central but unstated dilemma of this movie. What is real? What really matters? Knowledge or Feeling? Truth or Perception? Playing God in an unreal secluded world or being human in the real shared world? In a brilliant piece of cinematography, the movie leaves that question open-ended. It will blow your mind off. I would wish there is a sequel to this. If there were an Inception II, I would be the first guy in queue for the 1:30 AM show, just as I was on the day Inception got released.

Hurt Locker – Why is war a Drug?

There are some movies which do not make much sense unless you see the first scene of the movie. One example is 'Saving Private Ryan'. When I first saw the movie, I missed the first 10 minutes and the rest of the movie seemed very depressingly violent. I wondered why folks were so appreciative of the movie. The second time I saw the movie, I started at the very beginning where the old Private Ryan visits the grave of his saviors, and then the gory and the violence took a new 'meaning'.

“Lock Hunter” is as violent, gory and real, but different in that this war movie will not make sense until the last scene of the movie. The movie begins with the tag line ‘War is Drug’. This tag line gives a context for you to help make sense of the rest of the impassioned depiction of mindless violence. But the tag line does not answer the question 'why man needs that ‘war drug’ in the first place?' The last scene gives the answer. 

The movie starts with a bomb defusing operation that goes south, leaving the bomb defuser dead. He is replaced by a guy with great expertise who has a flamboyant, even daringly flippant way of defusing bombs. He does not give a damn about taking inordinate risks or about dying. One of his teammates asks him why he keeps doing what he does even though he knows that it is the roll of the dice every time he straps up his protective attire. He could die anytime. He replies, "I do not know". It gives an impression that this he is inexorably being drawn into war by something much deeper within him which he himself does not understand.

The pressing question in the mind of the movie viewer is, Why do some people love war so much even though they know that they could possibly die? Why does war have this power? Why is war a drug? And more importantly, why does man need that drug?

I believe the answer is at the end of the movie, when he is on a break and spending time with his one year old son who is playing with some toys. He is talking to his son… “You love playing with that... you love mama you love dada, you love your pajamas… you love everything. Don’t you? But you know what buddy… when you grow older some of the things that you love will not seem special any more, you’ll realize that ‘jack in the box’ is really a piece of tin and stuffed animal. Then there will be fewer things that you’ll really love. By the time you get to my age there will be only one or two things you’ll really love… to me I think it is one”. He is actually talking more to himself than his son.

In the very next scene he is back at Iraq defusing bombs with a gleam in his eye and the usual feistiness in his stride, as he walks strapped-up towards the next bomb. The heavy rock band music starts. The movie ends.

The quintessential truth of the poignant introspective dialogue that he has with is one year old is that as a man grows, his propensity to be satisfied by what life has to offer reduces. A young kid would be satisfied with a cookie. But a grown man may like a cookie, but that is not something that will satisfy him. He may need a jar of beer or a peg of wine. Even that may not satisfy him as much as it did in his teens when he first developed the taste for the stronger drinks. A yogi does meditation on a hill top and a hedge fund manager mints money sitting in his corner office. Both of them pursue what they think gives them satisfaction. Some people have sex because it gives them satisfaction. Some people watch TV because it gives them satisfaction. Some people got to war because it gives them satisfaction.

At that point, war becomes the drug. As for that matter anything can be a drug for the grown-ups, money, alcohol, sex (remember Woods), fame, books, TV, social service (self seeking), religiosity (without God) etc… Most people try different things at different stages in life seeking that which satisfies them. They are always looking for the next higher level of satisfaction. They are looking for something that is BIG enough which will satisfy them. If there is a God, then the only experience that can be BIG enough to satisfy man will be the experience of God. For, if God is indeed God, then there can be nothing that is more brilliant and beautiful and exciting and consequently more satisfying than Him.