No spoilers. You can read thru.
Freud would have patted Cristopher Nolan’s back. Freud, through his patient analysis of the mind and dreams, has postulated the levels of dreams and the volitional advantage that the dreamer accrues at each level. The subconscious mind in Freud’s words is like the water in a fountain that drops back into the vast pool before achieving a brief hiatus of consciousness while up in the air.
Freud in his guile cheerlessness commented “civilisation began when an angry man cast a word instead of a rock”. Nolan embellishes Freud’s word with an emphasis on ‘idea’ that is resilient, overwhelming, incredibly powerful and all encompassing.
History points out that the fascination with dreams has inspired men since the dawn of civilisation. Many directors have explored and dabbled with the idea of dreams. Most significantly in the year 1999; the year has seen the release of three movies that takes three decades to forget. ‘Matrix’ explored the possibility of a tricky computerised world operated from desolate matrix world; ‘eXistenz’ explored the notion of projecting oneself into the game with pods connected viscerally to the navel; ‘thirteenth floor’ presented us with the frontiers of a world that is created artificially.
Movies such as Richard Linklater’s ‘Waking Life’ have reduced the unimaginably complex ideas of the dream into levels, fine and refined, with an air of unforgettable philosophy. But none have tinkered with the idea of levels of dream with the perspicacity so accessible as Nolan did. To stretch the time in each level of dream as an isosceles shadow cast by a round object on a flat piece of board, that was pure genius. That a descent into each level of dream stretches time coupled with unimaginably complex intricacies interwoven with subconscious mind is not an idea that can be reduced into the celluloid framework. But Nolan has done that, and might I say he succeeded.
Nolan has not only presented the stretched time spans, but atmospherically conjured up projected contours of imagination in each level from the subsequent levels. He distilled the idea into a climactic situation with the characters running a race against time in each of the levels. Nothing can prepare you for what you are about to receive. Imagination can break open your frontiers like the great Carl Sagan said “Imagination can take you to places that never were, but without it, you go nowhere”. Nolan has left his trademark features on the way in each level (in the form of a character who is shot and bleeding or the character who is restless and tiring but seeking a finale), and he presents each level in its own way, a tempestuous struggle with the mind of the dreamer.
If it’s your dream, you can gain volition from level 2 and the degree of volition improves with each level. What if it is someone else’s dream, can you deceive him to reveal secrets in his subconscious atmosphere while he is dreaming, when he has control over the volition? A team of Peripatetic gamblers think so?
And, that is the central idea of the film. There are many directors who have proved their mettle a decade or so earlier and we cherish to follow them in their hall of fame. But here is Nolan, less than a decade old, a man of our times, who is genuinely seminal-he has delivered to both the mainstream and the underground.
This movie in particular, I believe would go down the history as something unique and complex for the mainstreamers; very audacious, inspiring, tickling and surreptitiously provoking for the underground.
“An idea is the most resilient” intones Decaprio both after and before the credits at the beginning and ending of the movie respectively. All the characters have been believable, more so was Ellen Page (for who I believe, ‘Juno’ did more good than harm. Fine actor she is.) The projection of gravitational effects from a prior level of dream onto the subsequent level was the most ingenious.
Inspired by Freud’s writings, I have myself explored the levels of dreams. I have descended till the second level of dream and the volitional powers it bestows on you is something so owerpowering that you become addictive. With enough practice, discipline and great dedication, in Freud’s word, you will succeed to gain access to the deeper levels of conscience.
Believe me, if you have never achieved this, try sleeping on the edge of your pillow (you will dream of a precipice, trip and fall over: induces precariousness), sleep with a couple of heavy blankets on your leg (you will dream of someone chasing you, but you can’t run: induces helplessness) or sleep with your TV timer on (you will dream of bright sunshine: induces light pervasive dreams).
Oh! By the way, the movie ends on an ambiguous note.
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