Inception

It’s inception of an idea as primeval as that which had infected Muybridge, who with his simple photographic flipbook got his horse, Sallie Gardner, moving. It was simulated reality ---- a motion recreated and stored as photographic evidences which later came to be known as the foundation of moving images. Nolan too toys with this idea of projected reality in his part-Matrix, part- mega-mind blockbuster Inception.

The genesis of the ‘projection’, a crucial thematic trope deployed by Nolan deceives and entices the spectator much like Sallie, a horse that moved when a series of 24 stereoscopic cameras captured it frame-by-frame galloping.

Caprio swept ashore, opens his eyes much like the spectator who is struggling to find some answers from the very first projection, the very first frame. Which part of filmic reality am I trapped in? Is this the beginning, the end, the middle or a subconscious jungle of absurdity and obscurity (a place where cinema takes you often)? I go on to figure that like me the protagonist too is grappling with that unbearable existential angst of ‘getting out’/figuring it out.

Layered universes begin. My memory of Matrix premonitions me that Neo could very well be Caprio, and that I am stuck in a dream that hasn’t ended. Will we get out through a telephone ring, it seems not, the only escape is death. Death -- that can free us of our projected realities, cinema and our ocular attachments.

The plot thickens as the mind is overpowered by psychedelic effects and gravitating stunts. Intersecting these universes – none of which are ‘real’ (even in filmic ‘reality) — a maze is created. This maze, designed not just by the pale and svelte architect, but by the mind that is positioning itself within the film asking questions that outside the cinematic and narrative context may sound ridiculous. ‘Is this real?’ Nothing is. Nothing will be.

‘You should never use projections from memory’, yet, Nolan a graduate from UCL does so by placing UCL’s library – a school he graduated from (and so did I) in the scene where Caprio is introduced to the enterprising architect Ellen Page. Deceiving with memories is a dangerous thing Mr. Nolan, it shattered the illusion of the dream, the dream/ cinema I had go on to believe is ‘real’. Nothing is real. Nothing will be.

Yet enthralled by the escape routes, the maze, the lanes and crevices that Nolan had set for me to crack, I push myself harder, faster, deeper into his lucid dream. Footpath’s are ravaged, buildings crumbling like cookies --- nothing is still, not even the mind.

Was this Nolan’s warning that cinema is deceptive, a trick that we all love even though knowing it is a blatant lie? It is an idea so intrinsically ingrained in our systems—sensory and emotional--- that no matter what object I design to wake up, I never will? The truth is --- I don’t even want to wake up, just like Caprio. Inception has happened. Now the idea will only grow. But like Mal should we all take a leap of faith? Credits. (My movie ends here)