Inside 'Inception'





Inception Movie Poster (2010)

  

            Oreinology is the scientific study of dreams. Not that I heard of it before but the mere notion of semi-fantasy world of dreams being studied is far too bizaare and mysterious in an ordinary person's point of view. Even more striking is how the 'Inception', which was hailed by IMDb and other pertinent movie review websites as the crème de la crème among the movies shown so far in 2010, twisted reality and added another level of comlplexity to the idea we hold about dreams. A colleague of mine told me that the movie will bring the 'nerd' out of any movie-goers mainly due to the fact that it possesses a storyline that will not appeal to any dumb chick-flick or action-flick lovers. To assess if this Christopher Nolan film really deserves the buzz, I watched it myself and by solely basing it on how my jaws dropped and my head ached just before the movie credits sarted rolling, I could say that the uniqueness of this movie is incomparable and even goes beyond the impact that 'Memento', 'The Dark Knight', and 'The Prestige' had brought to me.

               'Inception' tells the story of Dominic Cobbs (played by Leonardo DiCaprio, who also did great in 'Shutter Island' earlier this year), who, after failing his attempt to steal secrets from the subconscious dream of a Japanese businessman named Saito, was employed by the latter to a mission that will make use of 'inception' or as how the movie defined it, the process of 'planting' ideas in a person's subconscious mind by penetrating into his dreams without him knowing it. Their main goal is to break Saito's corporate rival's empire by using the latter's son as the target. The team, which is composed of a 'dream architect' who will build the 'dream', a forger who will copy somebody else's identity, a sedative chemist who will be responsible for creating a 'three-layered' dream, will accomplish the mission by breaking into the target's subconscious dream and 'plant' the necessary idea that will change the future of  their company and of his own forever. The main conflict arise when the team realizes that the target's mind is trained to defend unnecessary intrusions, thus making their mission quite more taxing, in addition to Cobb's unresolved conflict with his deceased wife, who keeps on interrupting their mission by consistently pestering his mind of guilt and remorse.

            The movie itself is a puzzle that worth one's full attention. It's a collage of different elements: there are some fast-paced scenes that will make you scratch your head in confusion but mostly, it will thrill you with its awe-inspiring special effects and unforgettable original story.You will never get what the movie is all about unless you digest it slowly (I'm talking about the story and not the pop corn that you munch). The story is multi-layered, complex, and cryptic, which is especially true if we are to talk about the movie's ending, an ambiguous conclusion that is the best of its kind. I couldn't help but be amazed of Nolan's genius and for creating an all-original script that will define a decade of movie-going. Although mind-blowing and complicated in its purest form, this is a sci-fi movie that will definitely leave a mark in anybody's heart and mind. The whole cast was perfectly assembled; they made the unbelievable sci-fi story believable. Two thumbs up for Nolan, DiCaprio, Page, and the rest of the cast for giving the audience a performance of a lifetime and for changing the way I perceive dreams.  




A scene from the movie 'Inception'

 

"Apocalypse and Beyond"

Imagine yourself alone in a nameless city perfectly resembling a post-war portrait. Towering rubbles and decaying bodies scattered everywhere you go; a harrowing scene that would best describe what a nightmare is. Imagine that this is real. In a blink of an eye, the world as you know it is now an ash land devoid of its flora and fauna, leaving you and other few survivors the choice to either live or die, to survive or to perish, to go on or to lose hope. The choice is yours. And with all the integrity left of your humanity amidst the harshest of all human conditions, what will you choose?

This is a hypothetical question that has been haunting me ever since I learned of Nostradamus, the Mayan prophecies, the four horsemen of Revelations, and all the events that will lead to the "end-of-the-world" phenomenon. They call it the 'Apocalypse'.

It was during my senior year in high school when the subject first tickled my imagination. I remember watching the movie Left Behind and witnessed how the "believers" of Jesus Christ suddenly vanished without a single trace, leaving the "nonbelievers" behind. Then came the biblical prophecies: the parable of ten virgins, the “rapture”, the “second coming”, the satanic 666, and the symbolical two beasts: the “beast of the sea” and the “beast of the earth”, which will turn out to be the "antichrist" couple at the end of times. I can still recall how it shook my spirituality and left me sleepless for some nights.

Fast forward to the present time, I'm still in awe on how stories from this specific genre still capture my interest. It makes me wonder about the fate that awaits our world in the future. But no matter how rich the literature is, only few fictional stories really moulded my perception about the 'Apocalypse' and the ‘life’ beyond it.

Every once in a while, a book changes how a person views his world. The Road did that to me.

It was a chance encounter. The cover shows a man hugging his child in a very dark and heart-breaking backdrop. Upon reading its back cover, I found out that the book has a post-apocalyptic theme so I grabbed it right away. Unbeknownst to me, The Road is actually Cormac McCarthy's magnum opus and was even awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006. I fell in love with this heart-wrenching masterpiece not because of its 'goodness' but of the 'darkness' which deeply engulfed my imagination and left me emotionally disturbed for quite some time. I even watched its movie adaptation which stars Lord of the Ring's Viggo Mortensen and was equally surprised by its compelling power and substance.

Using a cryptic but clear style of writing uniquely of his own, McCarthy tells the story of a father and his son who has survived an unknown cataclysm that left the world shattered and almost lifeless. Bringing only a grocery cart containing all of their belongings, they took the road and started travelling towards the south with hopes of finding safe haven in the end. Their profound journey continues as they struggle to survive in a world that is now dominated by cannibalism, hunger, death, and hopelessness. And as they come face-to-face with death every day, they would learn that keeping the "fire" within them still proves to be the best way to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds and still be "human" after all.

"You remember what you want to forget and you forget what you want to remember" is the novel's battle cry which speaks for the bleak and gloomy mood that the story has to offer. It is not the 'bad dreams' that one should be worried about because that means you're still fighting, as said by the father. Pain is a key to survival. It reminds me of my fellow countrymen under extreme conditions yet still manages to survive on a daily basis. Perhaps the pain of hunger is the main catalyst why most poverty-stricken Filipinos are able to think of ways to survive or, if they’re lucky enough, come out of it and make “rags-to-riches” stories out of their own lives.

But by just reading between the lines, I fully captured what The Road intends to impart.

Our planet is a "ticking time bomb". Some scientists might say that the end is yet to come because its expiration date may still be billion years away. But times have changed and our planet's irreversible extinction may be sooner than we actually thought. Beyond the unconditional fatherly love that the book portrays is a lesson that human civilization has been struggling to learn for ages. We've been warned about the green house effect, the hole in the ozone layer, the continuous threats of the global warming, and all the man-made phenomena here and there. They are the anatomy of every natural disaster that shook the whole world. And if we don't start changing our ways, the world as we know it will gradually turn into the dark ash land just like in The Road. Who knows? It could be ten or twenty years from now.

Without a doubt, The Road is a haunting tale of survival, love, and most importantly, life. If history taught me one thing, it would be the reality that life is all about choices. I've always been fascinated about the 'Apocalypse' but to tell you the truth, it is the darkest parts of our past that thrills me the most. From the dark Holocaust of WWII to the horrendous 9/11 attacks in the U.S., all of these human tragedies have proven how futile a single human life can be once the universe conspires to take such a huge quantity of casualties. These are the ‘signs’ that we ought to take heed of and behind all these is our power to live our lives to the fullest while it’s not too late. No one really knows how much time is left for us but The Road gives us two choices: We can either take the road of creedless comfort or the road to painful survival, with our own integrity still intact. Two roads. Two destinations. The choice is ours.

Filling Up The Vacuum

There's only one word to sum up my sem break: MONOTONOUS. Once in our lives, we all experience the weakening feeling of emptiness; the vacuum phenomenon that seems to remind us that there are some aspects of our existence that need to be satisfied and filled in. Inordinate brooding, in the end, will leave us exhausted and depressed, especially if the thoughts than run inside our minds are conflicting ones. I experience this ordeal on a daily basis, especially now that I have empty times to fill in with thoughts that eventually makes me feel empty even more. Being a hermit is a status that breeds paranoia because you don't have friends to hang out with and you don't have anyone sensible to talk to but yourself. For the first few weeks that I'm confined within the four corners of our house, I just do things repetitively on a daily basis without realizing that isolation has been robbing me of energy and purpose in life. I have realized that drowning yourself with multiple downloaded movies or keeping yourself sane by sharing your thoughts on your blog won't give you any help in filling up the vacuum within you. I feel more and more empty as time goes by. I need a companion - -a person that will bring back my sanity to the place where it rightly belongs. These feelings of uneasiness also make me realize that my pen has been my loyal best friend from the get-go; that I don't want to be a nurse anymore, a frustrating revelation that makes me wonder about my life after graduation. I've always longed to write professionally; it's something that fuels me up and gives me something to look forward to. However, it clashes with the fact that my parents want me to be a doctor. I've dreamed of becoming a doctor before but like nursing, it's a vocation that I have superficial desire for. I hate myself for being so fickle-minded but no matter how I supress and deny this, it just keeps on resurfacing every now and then. I guess my life is supposed to be this way; a puzzle that keeps on changing its pieces every once in a while. I'm about to embark on my last semester as a nursing student but the emptiness within me intensifies every time I ruminate about it. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed right now because I don't have the slightest idea what lies ahead of me. I will draw my future but this time, using a pencil so it won't be permanent. While I'm writing this, you can just imagine how the vacuum keeps on creeping within me. I don't give a damn because I know that when I arrive at the right time and at the right place, I will be man enough to decide what's the best path to take. Although I hate being alone most of the time, it makes me discover things within me more than what I've expected. Have you ever felt empty? You just have to listen carefully and once you hear the faintest sound within that vacum, you might get an epiphany that could change your life forever.